


Crush Ripe, Serve Cold

by leslielol



Series: Mode & Moment [2]
Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst, Death Threats, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Police Brutality, Secret Relationship, Suicide mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-11 23:02:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 46,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7074190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslielol/pseuds/leslielol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barba felt his life begin to shrink around him after the death threats started. Work was still the single greatest constant in his life, but dinners and vacations and a nightlife he felt he'd earned were slipping away from him. As a result, he spent more time in his apartment. </p><p>Luckily, he had company.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to "Mourning, Morning," and is set after the season 17 finale.

The more Carisi saw of it, the more Barba’s apartment surprised him. 

It was relatively small, no bigger than Carisi’s own apartment, except it felt more open for not being cut apart by needless hallways. Carisi supposed it made enough sense--Barba could eat expensive meals in fine clothes, or he could have a wealth of space most New Yorkers wouldn't see outside of a _Friends_ rerun. The place was nonetheless stuffed with fineries--the too-large dining table that doubled for a workspace backed against the couch, a painting by an artist Carisi assumed was famous, given the way Barba introduced it like the piece was another resident here, chrome cookware, and a top-of-the-line record player that got a lot of use. 

Carisi decided he liked the latter, best. The warm sounds seemed to fit the tight space better than the pronounced table or the monolith-like grand, gleaming refrigerator. 

If it wasn't already playing when Carisi arrived, metro card protruding from his pocket and hair tousled from the four-block jog out of the station nearest Barba's apartment, Barba would put it on. Crooners, women's contralto tones, sometimes Spanish but often not. Carisi had the vague hope of zeroing in on Barba's favorite, but the man never played the same record twice. 

Carisi took it for a challenge, and privately resolved to be around long enough to hear a second, third, and fourth playing. 

All the same, the apartment wasn’t as lived-in as Barba’s office. The couch wasn’t as comfortable, the walls weren’t adorned with as much history or personality. It was obvious where Barba truly felt at home.

-

Umm Kulthum sang a prayer as he and Carisi finished on one another, a thing Barba found too sacrilegious to share with Carisi. 

A month’s worth of biweekly visits had them locked in a perpetual honeymoon phase, born first of a slow breakfast after an awkward night. Those sentiments seemed to color what came later--even when Carisi visited expressly because Barba invited him, there was the inevitable asking after his security detail, whether he’d received any more detailed threats, if he felt safe.

It was a hell of a mood to set. Barba wondered if he’d simply come to like it.

He felt like a part of a very meager harem, or less fantastically, he felt like a burgeoning agoraphobic whom Carisi visited by night. It-- _the harem thing_ \--had never been a fantasy of his, and for the most part he was a touch disturbed by how quickly he got into the idea of having company whenever he wanted for it. But his was a practical mind, and at the very least, he appreciated the convenience. 

Barba tracked the changing expression in Carisi’s face. From awed, he became sated. Once sated, he became cocky. Then pleased and pleasing and--curiously--amused. Carisi’s tongue darted out ahead of his teeth, wet his lips in anticipation for a smile, then a laugh. 

“Something funny, Detective?”

Carisi ducked his head and planted a kiss on Barba’s shoulder. “Nothing. I'm just thinking how I took Rollins’ advice…” 

“Excuse me? Was there someone else in the room just now? Directing traffic, perhaps?” Barba sat up and shoved Carisi's bare legs off his own. 

Barba had a tendency to be insufferable after sex, even downright snippy. It was as though he could not sustain himself on pleasure, but had to chase it out of his mind with neuroticisms. Admittedly, Carisi had taken the poor mood to heart when he first encountered it, but after another brave try he saw the behavior for what it was: an attempt, however self-defeating, to test his bedfellow. To drive him out, if that was the simplest solution.

Luckily for him, Carisi was a convoluted lover--easily won, but matched every score. 

Carisi was eager in bed, which was a fine thing and befitting of his personality. However, when his hands and mouth weren't enough to take Barba in, he used the full form of his body, trading in minimal weight and too-sharp angles just to get closer. Hence, the routine tangling of legs. 

“Nah,” Carisi grinned and threw his head back. His sweat-tinged hair threw a splattering of drops onto the pillow, a gesture he made as though he had every right. “Those moves were all mine.” 

Barba rolled his eyes. “You should be so proud.”

He turned over to his right side, towards his bedside table. He collected a moistened wipe from a large pack, something Carisi found entirely too suggestive when he first laid eyes on it. _“Jeez,”_ he’d said, eyes shining as he took in the size of the tub. The damn thing near about kept the drawer from shutting. _“You weren't kidding about all your suitors, huh?”_

Truthfully, the collection of wipes was only recently acquired, and primarily used to mop up the sweat from his brow when a noise--however small--awoke him from compulsive dreams of his death into a potential reality. If the tub of wet wipes gave him a sense of sexual prowess, however crudely won, he'd take it. This situation gave him nothing else. In fact, the anxiety fed into him by the endless stream of threats took into his stomach like a an invasive parasite, a tapeworm, stealing from him his sturdy mass and libido, hand over fist. 

Carisi did his level best to give the latter its due. 

“So. What is it about Detective Rollins you find so imperative to share with me right this very minute?”

Carisi accepted a wipe from Barba and gave a smirk in return. “She told me to stop acting like I was so in love with you.”

Barba could only manage a neanderthal reply: “Oh?”

“Said it was--and I'm quoting here--’profoundly off-putting.’” 

“I don't know about _profoundly…”_ Barba said, relaxing now that Carisi was obviously teasing. _Love_ wasn’t a part of their newly shared lexicon. “I'd place it closer on the spectrum to _entirely,_ or _painfully._ ” 

“That's worse!”

“I disagree,” Barba murmured. He closed his eyes and debated silently with himself as to whether the issue ought to be pressed. Carisi brought it up--didn’t even wait out the afterglow--and clearly wanted Barba’s insight. 

Coolly, Barba asked, “Does she know how much progress you've made?”

“No… I thought,” Carisi stopped himself, confided, “Nobody knows.”

“It's for the best,” Barba said, firm, but still as though it was Carisi’s desire he was meeting, and his own terms rose in agreement. Never mind that it was Barba’s own intent to save face. At best, he was fraternizing with a police officer when other officers--their identities unknown to him--labored ill will towards the lawyer, and would doubtlessly extend those feelings to Barba's sympathizers. The exchange did not tip in his favor. 

The truth--or whispers of it--would tarnish Carisi, too. A young detective and prospective lawyer sleeping with an ADA was, just in its telling, a condemnation. If Carisi did tell Rollins, it would be no less than a confession. 

And if Barba told _Benson,_ heaven help him. He respected her tremendously and considered her a friend, but Carisi was one of her detectives, and that afforded him something like her grace. She’d excuse Barba like a lateral move If his presence threatened one of her own. Barba was not her subordinate; he could not have her protection. 

Which was a funny thing, given the constant stream of interchanging officers stationed outside his building, in a follow-car, and at his office. All were there for weeks now at Benson’s order.

“Rollins just, you know,” Carisi struggled to maintain a smile like the one Barba had wiped from his face. “She knew I was annoying you. And noticed that I don’t, really, anymore.”

Barba raised his eyebrows. “Let’s not get crazy. Your legs? Annoying. Your breath? Annoying. That face you make when you--”

Carisi practically threw himself on top on Barba for that one, teasingly nipping the man’s lips before pressing for a kiss. Barba met and easily returned the gesture, a thing that had become instinctive, second nature. Barba kissed Carisi like he’d been poured a drink--it’d be rude not to partake, and the effect was goldening. 

Carisi moved down to his neck, a favorite of his. The skin there was soft and touched by a day-old scent of cologne. 

“I can go again,” he said, and Barba felt the shape and form of the words buzzing against his skin as Carisi dragged his lips to make them. “Any objections?”

A breath caught in Barba's throat and he strained to answer, “Only to legal-speak in the bedroom.”

“Tacky,” Carisi said--not his own thoughts on the subject, but Barba’s. He'd heard it all before.

“See, you listen but you don’t _learn--”_ Barba was interrupted by the ringing of his own cell phone, which he instinctively reached for. He started to answer it, stopped and sighed.

Carisi lifted himself an inch above Barba. “Another hang up? Let me see--”

“Let you see what, exactly? The purposeful lack of evidence? Are you going to follow this lead?” In a huff, Barba tossed his Blackberry to the end of the bed, where it landed between their feet. “There it goes.” 

Carisi let Barba’s testy attitude go unmet. He bent down, gathered the phone, and inspected the recent call list.

“One of the same six numbers calling you,” he said, and went on to read the ugly and threatening messages associated with the number. TARU was provided copies of every text, and the stomach-sinking discovery some weeks ago was that they were being written by at least three different people, based on spelling and linguistic patterns. 

Barba narrowed his eyes and accepted his phone when Carisi handed it back. “You’ve memorized them?”

“You haven’t?” 

“Only coincidentally,” Barba said. He wore half a smile on his face, a barely-there invitation for Carisi to resume necking him.

But the moment was lost, and with its passing Carisi didn’t see the harm in asking, “Can we talk about your case for a second?”

 _“My_ case,” Barba repeated, as if the words themselves sounded different when applied to himself. He rolled over in bed, faced Carisi. “Please tell me you've caught all involved parties weeks ago and forgot to tell me. Or _better yet,_ kept it from me. How dramatic. I could throw things.”

Carisi didn’t say anything in return, likely under the impression that Barba was genuinely disappointed in him for not having linked every clue, made every mental leap, and slain all assailants.

“Though if that's the case, wait until tomorrow. I don't want to throw _my_ things.”

“I was just thinking,” Carisi began, ignoring Barba's last taunt, “You know how we knew Felipe Heredio was good for the threats, but lucked out with the drug possession charges so he'd at least do a little time?”

“The day we all cheered for cocaine. How could I forget?”

“I've since interviewed him in jail. A couple times. Pressed him to turn on whoever was paying him.”

“And?”

“Nothing yet, but you should have seen him.”

“I think I've seen plenty, thank you.”

“I mean… He smelled good.” 

Barba barked out a laugh. “Excuse me?”

“Which means he’s got access to nice things, scented soaps and a cell phone probably being the least of it.”

“Loaded up commissary,” Barba realized, and settled flat into bed so that he could stare uselessly at the ceiling. 

“And not a scratch on him.”

“Protection. Maybe it is the guards.”

“I'm still thinking cops, though. If only because influence should trump access, you know?”

It was a leap, but Barba had long since made the same conclusion. It was cops--not corrections officers--with whom he interacted most. Their arrests were upheld or broken by Barba’s legal doing, and even when their behavior could not stand up against the word of law, it was people like Barba who made those proclamations loudly in court, in public, for all to hear. 

Barba thought, then, of the messenger. Felipe Heredio’s smirking face and awful fucking _fade_ visited him in dreams and reality alike, so often that Barba came to know it personally. It could be a handsome face, even, if not for the ugly look in his eye that betrayed his intentions. 

“Maybe that’s why we were able to get him on the drug charges. He usually gets a free pass, doesn't have to concern himself with hiding anything.”

“He’s somebody’s hired hand,” Carisi agreed. He sighed, shifted in bed. His right hand dropped onto Barba’s thigh where it laid exposed, driven out from under the sheets. “We're looking into every beat cop who’s run a route near him in the past decade, looking for any connections. Nothing's been put to paper, obviously.” Carisi squeezed the flesh of the thigh, once, then retreated his hand. “I wish I had more for you.”

The touch was made out of pity, not renewed interest. Barba respected himself too much to whine and want for something that was gone. 

He sat up, said coolly, “Don’t sell yourself short. People still want to kill me, you say? That’s all any man ever wants to hear.”

He left the bed, drew on a pair of boxers and went to change the record and fix himself a drink. Barba could feel Carisi’s eyes track him through the motions, but he never once looked back.

-

They didn't talk about what they were doing--a miracle, really, given how freely Carisi talked about literally _everything else._ Barba neither questioned Carisi's interest or examined his own. It was as if they'd both fallen into a pit, accepted the terms, and began to build a new life there. A pit-life. Carisi carved out a wider space while Barba dug in a little deeper. 

There had only been one instance where they’d come near that conversation, waded in but struck out just as fast. When Barba came to the conclusion that Carisi was _actively_ censoring himself, he felt at fault. Questions, opinions--Carisi had both on intimate truths and far flung topics he hadn't even heard of, yet. The thought found him in bed with Carisi, and between their ragged breathing he’d asked what it was Carisi wasn’t saying.

Carisi had closed his eyes and said a stream of broken half-thoughts, “I didn't want to say something and… I don't want it to stop.”

At the time, Barba conflated the response with the rocking of his hips. 

Drink in one hand, Barba used the other to deftly remove the humming record from its player. He secured it in its slip case and idly examined the rest of his collection. Truthfully, he’d have preferred silence. But Carisi got ideas when things fell quiet, and Barba didn’t have the energy to entertain his inquiries--legal or otherwise. 

He heard the creak of the bed, the sound of feet against his floors. A moment later, Barba felt Carisi looking at him from the bedroom doorway, and with that the necessity of choosing a record skyrocketed. He looked at the record in his hand, certain that whatever it was would due, except that it was a Phil Collins tune. _No._

Carisi had pulled on his white undershirt, which had gone slack at the edges where Barba had fisted it with his hands and stripped it off of Carisi’s body like it had done some great offense to them both. The front was slightly tucked into his boxers, as if he’d drawn those on second, maybe as an afterthought. His hair was pushed back, drawn to favor his left side. 

Barba hastened his search for a worthy record, but he couldn’t outrun Carisi’s mouth, a faster thing than even his mind. 

“Can I ask you something?”

“Can you not?”

Barba’s sharp retort only held Carisi off for a moment. “No, I should ask it. If things weren't like they are, would you still want to hang out?”

“What a forgiving euphemism,” Barba quipped.

“Is that a no?” Carisi asked plainly. His hands moved absently towards where the shirt’s hem brushed over his narrow hips, where Barba always liked to start with him. “I mean, I get it. We wouldn't go out to dinner or anything. See a game or a movie or nothing.” 

Privately, Carisi suspected they wouldn't have done any of _those_ things, anyway. Barba took exotic vacations and went to the opera; Carisi saw Springsteen at Madison Square Garden, once, almost a decade ago.

“You have a nasty little habit of making other people's arguments for them,” Barba said, another non-answer. He gave up on the record and decided Carisi was maybe owed this, at least. An explanation for his actions, before his silence marked them for cowardice. “Listen. If people knew, they wouldn't kindly await an explanation,” _even if we had one_ Barba thought, but did not add. “You'd be labeled a slut and that'd be it.”

Carisi took swift and loud objection, saying, “Whoa, hey, how am I the slut?”

Barna shrugged. “It’s a simple process of elimination. I’m in my forties. I left behind that term in my twenties.”

“I'm thirty-three,” Carisi said, as if the math was on his side.

“I can't figure out if you're fishing for compliments or you really are this stupid. Have you seen yourself? Between you,” he pointed, “And me? The better catch is always the slut. So,” Barba lifted his glass to toast Carisi. “Well done _you.”_

Carisi rolled his eyes and shook his head, seemingly annoyed, save for the pink rising to color his cheeks. “Let's say I was fishing for compliments.”

Barba’s lips twisted off his glass of scotch. “Yes, let's.”

The moment stood between them like a thing they could both come back and visit later. Barba could see Carisi’s face scrunch up, embarrassed but pleased, and Carisi could hear again how Barba thought he was a catch. 

With some swing in his hips, Carisi said, “For the record, I think you’re a catch. _And_ a slut. With your industrial sized box of wet wipes.”

He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, an unspoken request to use Barba’s shower. Barba waved him off. Carisi did not usually stay the night, weekends being the sole exception. He had to be at work in the morning, same as Barba, and the time away afforded him some distance. Otherwise, he risked smiling too wide or letting a touch linger too long, all things sure to spoil Barba’s trust. 

He learned quickly, Barba thought, which wasn’t something Barba could have said for himself. He tilted his glass to his mouth onto to find that he’d sucked that particular well dry. 

If he didn’t have another, he knew his thoughts would quickly sour. If he did, he might do something incredibly foolish, like ask Carisi to stay. 

Barba lost himself to his own thoughts, and did not stir until Carisi again entered the living room, dressed in the clothes he’d arrived in, each item bearing some particular touch of Barba’s. The t-shirt he’d twisted out of shape, the hoodie he’d called a nuisance, the jeans he’d well enough pushed down to Carisi’s knees without unzipping them, first. 

He looked like a million other law school graduates, tired-eyed but self-possessed, and using a hoodie for a security blanket. He smiled when he noticed Barba was staring. 

Of course, it was Barba’s first instinct to go and wipe it off his face.

“Are you unhappy with how things are now?”

It did the job. Carisi frowned, reared back like he’d been hit with a foul stench. “What? No.”

“Because you realize we started at the finish line, don’t you? You’re here--in my apartment--all the time. Any other set of circumstances and you’re shoveling out your half of a couple dates on the rare occasion I have a night off.”

Carisi leaned back against the doorjamb, folded his arms across the heavy rendering of FORDHAM lettering across his chest. “What kind of dates?”

“Dinner, like you said.” Barba pretended to think about it. “Maybe a show.”

“Like Broadway?”’

“No, Carisi, we’ll watch two rats tear each other apart over half a shwarma. Showtime’s at nine.”

“Do I pay the rat for this honor or--?” 

It was such a _stupid_ comeback that Barba stood up and walked away. 

Carisi followed him into the kitchen, goofy smile commanding his face, arms splayed out in earnest. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

Barba stationed himself at the fridge, opening it and seeing nothing of interest. The mechanic churn of cold air was pleasing, though. He let it cool his bare legs. 

“I know you think it would be _fun_ to do those things, but, you know, have a little common sense.”

“I didn’t say I was unhappy,” Carisi reminded him, still smiling, but only just.

A saran-wrapped dish finally caught Barba’s eye. He retrieved it, then closed the refrigerator door with a flourish and said, “Tarte Tentación.”

Barba retrieved two forks, as much an invitation as Carisi was going to get. They ate straight from the dish. 

He’d expected Carisi to be wary of what was--essentially--a mysterious brown mound, but Carisi took an eager first bite. Barba’s cynical nature made it for a tactical move--anything to avoid a strenuous discussion--but knew it was just as likely Carisi, the youngest of four, didn’t get to be picky. 

All the same, the detective’s mouth went slack in pleasure, and he had another bite balanced on his fork even before swallowing his first. 

“Did you make this?”

Barba took smaller bites, knowing the sweet dish for being deceptively heavy. “No. Some family friends were out of the country and missed my grandmother’s funeral. They brought this around yesterday, after some interesting discussion with my security detail.” 

Carisi spoke around another mouthful. “It’s _really_ good.”

“It’s plantains and rum, there’s not much room for error.”

“Cannolis are fried dough and ricotta cheese, and I’ve known some travesties.”

Carisi had the gall to wink, and press his lips into a wet little smile around fourth--fifth?--bite of tart. It wasn’t so sexually devastating as it was _shy,_ even a touch naive. 

Barba decided to cut the shit. “Are you gay, Detective?”

“Uh,” Carisi said, and swallowed fast. He looked a breath away from explaining dumbly, _The cannoli was not a euphemism._

Barba pressed, “Bisexual, maybe? Or did college liberate you _so much_ that you travel that spectrum like a greased wheel?”

“I mean,” Carisi was blushing, now, pink and pleased like he looked when Barba commended him on one thing or another. “I’m not, you know. _Loose.”_

Barba rolled his eyes. “Of course not. We only work together and I’m only old enough to be one of your professors. I’m _sure_ your virtue is the stuff of legend.”

“Are you,” Carisi dropped his voice to a needless whisper, like they were actors in a play and he had to step out of the scene. “I’m not following. Do you _want_ me to do slutty stuff?”

 _God,_ Barba was tempted to follow that thread until Carisi unraveled at his feet. Instead, he only patted Carisi on the cheek and told him to put a pin in that thought, they’d surely revisit it later.

He returned to the matter at hand: sexuality, and whether Carisi was prepared to be known for his.

“With me, it’s an open secret.” _And in some circles, a joke,_ Barba thought, but did not say. Arguments were never won out of pity. “And my title and accomplishments don’t spare me anyone’s lowest opinion.” 

The colorful insinuations and terms that got thrown around-- _Spanish Dandy_ was a personal favorite--didn’t touch him. He’d grown too much for that. Enough posturing in fine suits, walking the courthouse halls with his reputation at his back, and he couldn’t help but internalize the success he’d made for himself. Embodied it, even.

But those words were heard all the same, taking on a broader audience every time they were voiced. Even meeting them with an ready smirk, a damning line of his own, or nothing at all did little to deny their purpose. Barba was only a _part_ of the intended audience, and these things were said with the explicit intention of his colleagues and superiors hearing them, too. 

“Even if I am the one to blame,” he continued airily, “All the nasty looks and comments will fall to you. You’re quite welcome.”

“You're not--” Carisi threaded a hand through his damp hair, tugging slightly when he gathered the ends at the nape of his neck. He hadn't washed it, just rinsed off. “There is no blame. Okay? Gross.”

“Poetry,” Barba hummed. 

Carisi picked at the tart with his fork, but had lost his appetite. “Anyway. I don't think that would happen. You know, not from the Lieutenant. Or Amanda or Fin or,” he stopped, finished lamely, “Anybody like that.”

Of that, Barba was skeptical. He didn’t bother mentioning all the disparate opinions of other cops, attorneys, and judges who Carisi conveniently left out of their little world. 

He decided to let Carisi off easy, saying, “If predicting people's behavior was a science, there wouldn't be any use for lawyers. And then where would we be?”

Ever the smartas, Carisi answered, “I'd still have a job. _You'd_ be unemployed.”

“And on _that_ pleasant note, goodbye.” 

Carisi shoveled a final bite into his mouth, which earned him a foul look and accompanying admonishment: “You're _disgusting._ Just take it.” 

Barba wrapped the remaining tart in foil and stuffed it into a paper bag. When making the handoff, he did so with the added bonus of elbowing Carisi in the gut and pointing him towards the door.

-

Carisi arrived in the squad room a few minutes shy of the others, but a box of cannolis in the breakroom to show for it. Admittedly, they were little more than a smokescreen, a deterrent for hungry coworkers, lest they check the break room fridge and find the last piece of Tarte Tentación he'd packed in a Tupperware container. 

He stopped short of Lieutenant Benson, who may have consciously put a desk between herself and a red-faced Barba. 

“Surveillance footage?” Barba repeated. “Since when?”

Rollins was sat at her desk, her eyes locked on the footage playing out on her computer screen. Fin had pulled up a chair behind her, and Barba all but stood in front of him to get a better view. 

“Just the other day,” Rollins said offhandedly. “To test out angles and sites over the weekend.”

Barba pursed his lips. Though perhaps not uncalled for, he should have at least been informed. And while Carisi had not announced himself--as he was wont to do--Barba knew he was there, and knew better than to glance in his direction. 

“And to cut down on department waste, I assume,” he said, and looked to Benson for confirmation. “I’m losing the security detail?”

“They’ll follow you to and from work. That won’t change.” Barba didn’t need to ask, it was clear on her face: this was a hard-fought battle, and she’d at least won some of it. She looked sympathetic, always, but resolved that there was success to be torn from the jaws of defeat. It was her nature.

Similarly, it was Barba’s nature to mask his unease with a cutting word and his well-developed mean streak. “But I can sneak out the fire escape, now, is what you’re saying.”

Rollins smirked at that. “Or you could use the door.”

“Or the door,” Barba agreed flatly. “And greet death like a welcome guest.” He huffed, still annoyed, but readier now to accept what had already been done. He acquiesced: “Find anything?”

“Just one familiar face,” Rollins said, her inquisitive blue eyes peering up from over the top of her computer.

“Carisi,” Fin called out, an ease to his voice that was deceptively calming. “Cozying up with the ADA. You ain’t thinking of leaving us, are you?”

“Hey, one conversation with this guy and I was talked out of it!” Carisi grinned, and Barba thought that was actually pretty _slick,_ and they were almost home _free--!_

But Carisi faltered under the gaze of his Lieutenant. His usual excuses about forgotten paperwork and case files may have satisfied the protective detail without a second thought, but fooling his own boss with those half-formed lines would be next to impossible, not to mention an insult to her intelligence. He mumbled weakly, “Um, no, I was just there to update the Counselor on Heredio.”

“Quick conversation,” Rollins said. More time with the footage would tell her otherwise; in reality, Carisi’s latest visit lasted nearly three hours.

Barba, who had still not laid an eye on Carisi, knew it was up to him to salvage the moment. “God,” he said loudly, “Is that what the back of my head looks like? I should sue my barber.” 

He stepped away from his view of the screen, made sure his steps were loose and unencumbered. “As personally revealing as this slideshow has been, when can I expect to be footloose and fancy free?”

“Hopefully not too soon,” Benson said, and gave Barba an encouraging nod. “I’m working on it. In the meantime, I think it would be useful to have a list of places you frequent day-to-day. Grocery stores, restaurants, bars, anywhere outside of your apartment and your office.” 

“I can answer that for you now. Besides my office and apartment, I’d add the courthouse and here. And the bodega in between.”

“There gotta be six.”

“The _nice one._ ”

“No yachts?”

Barba’s phone buzzed in his pocket. Funnily enough, the barrage of vitriol and threats he’d received over the past several months did nothing to dampen the reflex he had to answer a call without hesitation. 

“No,” he drew out the word, his attention lost to the text from his secretary reminding him of an upcoming appointment. “Funnily enough, being marked for murder narrows a man’s circle of friends. Full disclosure, it was slim pickings among those who’d call me fine company _before_ this face became one _begging for a bullet._ I’m quoting here.”

“Well, they’re missing out,” Carisi said, his gaze no longer shyly drawn to the floor. Barba made a face of disgust, as if the sheer preciousness of that consoling statement reeked of a July day in the apartment above a low-rate sushi bar.

“Oh my god,” he said, bone-dry, while rolling his eyes and collecting his briefcase. “I’m going to leave the sharing circle, now. Call me when you have a case for me to win.”

-

Only when Carisi spotted Barba in the building’s lobby, two floors below the man’s office, did he realize he hadn’t taken a good look that morning. Otherwise, he would not have been so taken with the snug fit of the handsome brown suit and the shock of purple at Barba’s throat, boasting like a peacock’s plume.

There was a pattern on his shirt, too, Carisi noticed. A faint spread of miniscule dotted lines. He looked nice.

The thought tumbled out of his mouth as Barba approached him. 

Barba frowned. “Yes. I know. Did you follow me here?”

“I thought you’d take a car. I basically ran, been here for twenty minutes.” 

There was a slight sheen on his face Barba saw as he sidestepped him and made for the elevators. Carisi followed. “Carmen didn’t let you wait in my office?”

“This isn’t official…”

They didn’t discuss these things outside of Barba’s apartment, and had no off-the-books meetings to show for themselves. It was Barba’s first instinct, and Carisi knew well enough to follow suit. Just this once, Barba made an exception. 

“I’ll send her out for coffee.” 

“With a coffee in your hand, you’re gonna send her out for coffee?”

Barba brushed past him, said, “It’s like you’re sleeping with me and you don’t even _know_ me.” 

With Carmen gone, Barba’s office to themselves, and Barba awaiting an explanation, Carisi found himself suddenly agonizing under the attention. He wished he’d just said something in the lobby when Barba approached him, coffee in one hand, phone in the other, dressed impeccably and seemingly unbothered by the security detail hot on his heels. Barba might have been distracted, then, which may have softened his verdict. 

Carisi decided to just come out and say what needed saying, to speak plainly and trust that Barba would hear it that way. 

“I can’t lie to my Lieutenant. If Benson asks, I gotta tell her.”

Barba set himself upon his mail. His texts and peace of mind aside, this--at least--was one venue his agitators had not infiltrated. He supposed there were too many opportunities to source a substance-filled-letter back to its sender. More likely, though, Barba figured people doubted he opened and read his own mail.

What could he say? He had a beautiful letter opener and found the routine to be calming.

He didn’t look up when he said, “Liv is not going to ask you, point blank, if we’re sleeping together.”

“She’ll ask why I was there,” Carisi pressed, pained and worried as if the subject hadn’t already breached the air in the squad room. 

“And you covered that.”

Carisi made a pained noise, a whine that twisted up and stalled in his throat. He’d _already_ lied, and there was no undoing that.

“And the next time? And every time after that, when I show up on the security footage?” Carisi wiped a hand over his mouth, anxious. The prospect of lying to his colleagues and boss was becoming more likely with every second he spent protesting it. “Maybe we could--” Carisi started to say, but Barba cut him off. 

His voice was crisp and sharp when it shattered Carisi’s world.

“Okay. I see your point. We’ll stop, then.”

“We--wait, what?”

Barba clarified, “No more activity, no more questions.” 

It was a simple enough equation, though Barba did not see gains on either side. He kept his chin up, maintained the ghostly image of his famed stoic persona, hoping Carisi would draw confidence from it, imitate and emulate it. There was so much of Barba Carisi openly appreciated and wanted for himself: success as a lawyer, tenacity in the courtroom, a reputation for greatness. All were inflated in Carisi’s mind, some, but all were equally undeniable if named. 

Instead, Carisi appeared genuinely shocked by the suggestion. An _offer,_ even, by Barba’s terms. The decision to end their relationship in the face of one simple word of admission seemed an abject failure of creativity and drive. If Barba had wanted any other outcome, he would have thought of a means to get it.

Carisi’s mouth moved absent of any words. He shut it, finally, and demurred. “Sure, yeah. That’s… an option.” 

Barba’s stomach sank. He sliced open another letter, but didn’t feel the satisfaction. 

“It's probably for the best. I have a lot on my plate right now.”

“I thought we'd talked about my helping with that. For. Experience.” It was only tangentially true, but Carisi only needed as much. He wanted to stay in Barba's life, wanted to sink himself into the little sliver of it that played records, shared meals, and smiled sweetly after making mean jokes. Not twenty seconds ago, Carisi believed he was welcomed to that much. If he couldn’t have that, though, he’d take paperwork and hearings and appeals and coffee runs. He’d take it and be glad.

Barba sighed, put down his mail, and crossed his arms over his chest, more huddled than defiant. “It’s just. Neater.”

Carisi stood for a moment, staring dumbly at Barba as if he hoped to be corrected. He wanted Barba to roll his eyes, make a crack about Carisi’s law school of choice, and insist that _no,_ he didn’t _mean_ they should _end things,_ how could Carisi think such a thing?

He wanted to be told, _You’re smarter than that._

But Barba said nothing, and the silence numbed Carisi’s fingertips, his hands, his limbs until it was all he could do to remain upright and balanced on his own two feet. Barba didn’t appear to have that problem--he returned to his mail, slicing open another request for his time and insight at this conference or that one, where a few hours of work was done only after he’d decided on the important thing: did he want to speak for two hours and then head out to the beach or hit the slopes?

The pointless task could not sustain him, and Barba began to drum his fingers on the heavy wood of his desk. Finally, he dropped the the act, stood from his desk and studied Carisi, drinking him in--a long taste before the drought--like he knew something the detective didn’t. 

“Do you at least understand?” he asked, and while the words would make more sense being snapped in Carisi’s face, Barba’s tone was conspicuously gentle. “Blink twice for--”

“Shut up,” Carisi said, though any bite was peeled off the words so that they were nothing, not an insult, and certainly not a command. “I’m not an idiot.” 

“I know you’re not,” Barba said in that same kindly tone. It seemed unnatural, indicative of a lie he was secretly telling. “That’s why I knew you’d understand.”

Carisi felt his face flush red, quick in a way that spoke of embarrassment, but hot like anger. When he met Barba’s gaze, Carisi didn’t know what Barba saw staring back at him. Strangely, it felt like surrendering a title. Carisi could have laid a golden crown on Barba’s desk and not felt silly for it, at least in this one moment in time. 

“Okay,” he said. “Um. Well. Have a… neat day.”

-

It was two days into the work week when the order came down to Lieutenant Benson regarding ADA Barba: the threat level was stagnant. Hang-ups and texts did not warrant the physical presence of security detail when no one was found to be staking out his apartment building. Benson's counter argument--because it was obviously guarded--was ignored in favor of expediency.

Such was the Threat Assessment Division’s verdict. Benson had another. 

Barba, decked out in a grey suit with a pastel shirt-and-tie combination the color of competing cotton candy flavors, sat while everyone else gathered in the conference room stood. It felt appropriate, given he was being told how his life was going to be for now on. He recalled his mother making a similar lecture when he’d been young and prone to sneaking out at night because his friends in the neighborhood managed the same.

But there was a twist: all that Benson described would fall away. And loathe though he was to admit it, Barba needed police protection--and protection _from_ the police, as the case may be--same as he’d needed his mother’s strong guidance. He was in danger without it.

Benson made her pitch, and Barba realized this much: she was not his mother. 

She asked, essentially, for Barba to draw his agitators out of the woodwork. She asked that he be seen, that he take back his public life, the one that had narrowed under the combined weight of every threat to find him unguarded and alone and to _make him pay._ What she described was an impossible task; Barba scarcely remembered the life he’d had before splitting his time between work and home, and never deviating from his path.

He stood and delivered his retort with all the sincerity it deserved: “I’m sorry, I must have had a _massive stroke_ just now. Did you rip this idea from an episode of _Miami Vice?_ This is--at best--a plan for when all well-considered plans have failed.”

“We’ll be with you every step of the way.”

“That’s… a tremendous amount of resources for a plan that actions _nothing.”_ Barba found himself looking from Benson to Carisi, as if the least experienced member of the team could add the most insight. He looked away just as quickly, and surveyed the team. None looked optimistic. Fin couldn’t even look him in the eye. 

Barba shook his head, awed. The fact that any of them would have taken the plan and run with it was not lost on him; these people did near about maimed their own damn selves on a weekly basis. 

“Next you’ll ask me to indict another couple of cops just to draw attention to myself,” he said, and Amanda opened her mouth, a word of encouragement on her lips, but Barba cut her off. “One, no. Two, very illegal.”

“You falsified court documents when you claimed Munson’s victims were in on gang activity,” Fin pointed out. “What’s the difference?”

“The difference being, _I don’t actually want to die._ ” 

Barba was losing his patience. His face was starting to mirror the aggravated pink of his tie. “Are you literally just giving me shittier options so that the one where I play a sitting duck sounds preferable in comparison?” 

The ensuing silence, he thought, spoke for itself.

“So we float a story,” Amanda reasoned. She looked to Carisi for support, but found him conspicuously without an opinion of his own. “Some newspaper claims you’re out to make a name for yourself tearing down bad cops.”

“And where does that story go when you’re done? I won’t purposefully tarnish my reputation--”

“To stay alive?” Carisi cut in, and pushed off from the desk he’d been leaning against. He stepped to Barba, even cocked his head a little to make his point that Barba’s denials weren’t, in themselves, their own ideas. “No? Is that where you draw the line, Counselor?”

The room fell quiet. The assessment wasn’t wrong, but Carisi made his point with the same brash sensibility that had alienated him in other police divisions. 

Barba took a step to match Carisi’s. 

“Not abusing the legal system to my personal advantage? Yes, actually. Or don’t they teach you that at night school?”

Carisi twisted at the hip like the remark had come coupled with a physical blow. But it was a boomerang move, and he came right back around, undeterred, and leveled Barba with as hard a look as he could muster. This was some playground shit when it started, but more than that Carisi had thought they’d moved past it. 

He suddenly realized he could not fathom how that idea survived as long as it did. It should have cratered in on itself without reason or example to nourish it. What about sleeping with a man meant you respected him? 

“I passed the same bar exam you did,” he said, his Staten Island accent rolling thick under his rising temper, but Barba wouldn’t let him have even that--a win in his column, however small.

“Oh!” he practically shouted, his tone high and mocking, “I hadn’t heard! It’s not like you don’t take every opportunity to remind us all! Congratulations! Now, if anyone can confirm you didn’t pull your _badge_ out of a _cereal box,_ I’ll eat those words.” 

Each word was sharpened to a point, and when Benson intervened she felt as though she’d put herself in the midst of a knife fight. She put a hand on Carisi’s forearm in an attempt to ground him, and held her other hand raised, a breath away from the shock of pink rising out of Barba’s breast pocket. It was a gesture that said, _hold your fire._

“Guys--” she started, got no further.

“Fuck you, Counselor,” Carisi said, and even in a whisper, his words didn’t go unheard by anyone in the room. 

“Carisi,” Benson snapped. “You’re out of line. Leave. _Now._ ”

Carisi didn’t waste a moment arguing. He kept his eyes on Barba, and left the room with one last insult on his lips: “You look like a fucking baby shower, by the way.”

Behind him, Fin mouthed to Rollins, _Baby shower?_

She mouthed in return, _Holy shit._

There was another awful moment in the room where everyone collectively realized Carisi had gotten the last word, and wasn’t _that_ a slice? 

“He’s in a mood,” Barba said, just a stupid thing to shatter the silence. Glances went around the room, fleeting and quick. No one said another word about it. 

Benson pinched the bridge of her nose, as if that alone could starve off the migraine that would undoubtedly mar the rest of her day. “If we do nothing, Rafael, the situation doesn’t change. We’ll start small. Go about your life. One of us will tail you.”

Rollins raised the point: “Lieutenant, anyone who has any notion of harming Counselor Barba has likely done their homework. We’re not going to go unnoticed.”

“So let’s not bother,” Benson said, and left the matter for Fin and Rollins to hash out.

“So you’re going to babysit me,” Barba gathered, though his attention was on Benson as she left in search of Carisi.

Rollins chanced a wry smile. “Hardly, Counselor. Babysitters make out like bandits. We’re only getting overtime.”

-

Benson found Carisi in her office, like he’d gone there to specifically await his punishment. 

He was sat on the couch, elbows balanced on his knees, head cradled in his hands. His legs were shaking, all nervous energy. He looked like how her headache felt: a misery.

“Carisi. What the hell was that?”

“I’m sorry. Ma’am, I am so sorry.” He raised his head up from his hands and looked near to tears. Pale-faced and stricken, it was as though he’d internalized Benson’s incomprehension and felt it ten times over. The disrespect was one thing, but the anger in his heart had surprised him. That he’d _wanted to,_ but hadn’t taken the opportunity to hurt Barba worse terrified him.

Benson saw it for an overreaction, and though her mind spun out towards Carisi’s religious nature, she had trouble imagining that a mean-spirited comment could warrant a near-breakdown. 

She sighed. The situation with Barba was difficult enough, she didn’t need Carisi losing it, too. 

“This… has been a stressful situation for all of us. Barba is understandably on-edge. We need to be more understanding of that, okay?”

After an absurd crack of hysterical laughter, Carisi buried his face in his hands again. 

He recovered, dragged his hands off his face and looked his Lieutenant dead in the eyes. “I’m worried about him. I’m really worried.” 

Benson sat uneasily on the couch beside him. What she was seeing was too much, which meant she knew too little.

Carisi continued, so genuine it made her sorry to hear it, “He knows the reality of these threats. I don’t need to remind him.” He sucked in a wet breath through his nose. “I’d apologize to him if I thought he wouldn’t interrupt and tell me to get to the point between _I’m_ and _sorry._ ”

“Listen, Carisi…” Benson knew she could dismiss him for the day, and the embarrassment would be punishment enough. She could slap him with sensitivity training. Put him on walk-ins. Hell, she could suspend him. Barba could be tough to take sometimes, but he wasn’t among her rank. She wasn’t accountable for his behavior.

Admittedly, she’d just left a meeting meant to change that. 

She patted Carisi’s arm. “Tell the others I chewed you out for this.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! Thanks so much for the great response to this story. I hope this next chapter is enjoyable. I should preface that this chapter gets rather dark. Check the tags--I've added some that relate to this instalment.

Barba realized the concept of being babysat had scarcely occurred to him before. Someone watching out for his safety--wasn’t that just goodness? Didn’t those eyes belong to friends and loved ones? Didn’t the effort go both ways?

It wasn’t really so bad.

The inherent awkwardness fell away by the second day, as neither party could bother to maintain the effort. It was a meal, shared with a colleague, never mind the threats that came part in parcel, like a complimentary side for the table. And while his phone occasionally buzzed with an interruption of the sort, it was not as though Barba needed to do any explaining. He’d receive a message, read it over, and slide his phone across the table. It was a common enough occurrence so as to not merit any discussion.

They'd sat in silent anticipation of their meals for some time, and only with their arrival did Barba find cause to speak. He’d long thought of asking after Carisi, and had more than his share of opportunities to do so. Two weeks was a lot of lunch and dinner opportunities with the likes of Benson, Rollins, and Fin. But he could never quite get his lips around the name, least of all like he’d once had, back when he could whine for it, demand it, or simply ask. Back when Carisi would answer him gladly, every time.

Instead, Barba asked of Detective Tutuola: “Is this as miserable for you as it is for me?”

“Aw nah, this is a dream.” Fin’s voice was a lull inside a lull. It never varied, and Barba liked that for its uniqueness. 

Fin looked at his plate, continued, “I love… whatever the hell this is.”

“You picked this place,” Barba said, suddenly feeling defensive. And he thought tempeh tacos were an excellent choice, given the fairly bare lunch menu.

“Ken picked this place.”

“Your son, right?”

“Yeah. Said I should try it out.” Fin was slowly realizing Ken must have suggested the restaurant for his father to bring a date, but even then found the abundance of soft jazz music piping in from overhead and low lighting to be a stretch for him. “I think he was fucking with me.”

Barba didn’t get a chance to reply. Fin’s face settled into a strange look--the absence of all expression, as if the man had suddenly, _consciously_ become a nonentity. The ease with which Fin’s face slipped away reminded Barba of a serial killer he’d once successfully tried, and gotten a personal record of _three life sentences_ for his efforts. It was strange to look back on such a gruesome case with no lack of fondness. 

In this instance, he supposed Fin’s objective was the same--to become unseen--though the capacity in which he ordered those talents was a little less homicidally inclined. He was watchful and mindful of his surroundings, but was oriented in the search for predators, not prey. 

_Cops do this,_ Barba thought to himself. _It's normal._

He felt inclined to confirm his suspicions all the same, asking, “Something up?”

His voice sounded hollow, tinny. About as unlike himself as Fin’s absent expression. 

“Nah,” Fin said, slow and drawn. “I don’t think so.” 

God, the cop-speak. It about drove Barba up the wall--why be so secretive with one’s thoughts? Who did it help, to be cagey? 

These thoughts burned in Barba’s chest, erupted as the truly bizarre demand that Fin _eat his lunch._

“Okay, so take your murder face off and eat your fucking tacos before they congeal into--I don’t know--sod. Or something.” Barba stabbed his knife and fork into the chicken breast set before him, but slipped and scratched the plate. He threw down the utensils as if they’d made that awful, grating wail all on their own. 

Fin didn’t so much as blink. 

“You’re a little keyed up, Counselor.”

Fin was being kind. Barba was _going out of his mind._

“Yeah,” Barba said, the word big and full of air but little else. Months of being alone with his fear had driven him to frustration, and being thrust into a world where other people had a front row seat to it only served to agonize him further. And while his neuroses were not shared, they were taken in. Even buttoned to the throat in a sharp suit, Barba knew his colleagues could see him coming apart at the seams. At the very least, it was humiliating. 

“I need a drink,” Barba said, and looked idly around as if someone who could help with that ought to have heard him. “You want?”

“I’m on the clock.”

“I’m buying,” Barba said, but while shaking his head as if it didn’t need saying so. 

“That’s what’s up,” Fin grinned, and they both ordered a scotch. 

The scotch did a lot to improve the tacos, and Fin polished off his plate. Barba even got his act together, made use of his knife and fork like any toddler could do, and finished almost half his meal. He’d taken to looking around, even though Fin was quick to tell him to stop, but not because it would draw attention to himself.

“It’s just annoying, man. Calm down.”

After another drink to take the edge off the first, Barba found himself doing just that. 

“Hey. Did you know there’s a massive nude portrait of your former partner up at the David Zwirner Gallery?”

“Oh yeah, Zwirner’s my shit,” Fin said, then broke into a grin. “That old thing’s making the rounds again? Damn.”

“Honestly, I couldn’t tell you if it’s still there. I saw it a while ago, before all this,” Barba waved a hand, indicating Fin’s presence and their ridiculous shared dining experience. 

“That’s fine, man. Not a thing I need to see twice.” 

“It’s the kind of thing that stays with you,” Barba agreed. Then, after a thoughtful beat, “He’s aged well.”

Fin about choked on his scotch. 

-

“Heard you had lunch with Fin.” Benson smiled at the mere thought of her friend of nearly two decades having a meal with Barba. Both of them were good men and could count themselves among her most valued relations.

But, neither was particularly suited to the other’s company. Barba could say more words in a breath than Fin would bother with in a day. 

“Is that funny to you, Lieutenant? We have many shared interests,” Barba tutted. Coincidentally, lunch with Fin had been one of the better bouts of babysitting he’d subjected himself to--it was the first, though by no means the last, that he'd started with a belly full of alcohol. “Did you know he and his son saw _Hamilton?_ I haven’t even seen _Hamilton._ ” 

“I hope that’s not a result of your self-imposed house arrest.”

“God, no. If I could even get tickets? I’d take that son of a bitch Felipe Heredio for my date.”

“Well, he does have your number.”

Barba snorted softly at that. And while he didn’t need to look at Benson to confirm she’d only been teasing him, he did, anyway. She looked beautiful. Barba always found himself wanting to tell her so. Her hair was loose and spilling over her shoulders in silky bands of brown against the warm camel of her coat. And when she raised her chin slightly to drink from a glass of wine, it was like she was doing it a favor. 

Drinks after work. It used to be normal, a welcome little treat. Now, given that his company was more or less compelled to be there, the little party lost its shine.

Barba drummed his fingers on the bartop--not quite a signal for another, though he wouldn’t send it back if one came. 

He said, gaze locked on his own drink, “This is not working. Is not going to work.”

Benson pretended as though she hadn’t heard him, as if her next point of conversation was a natural and independent thought. “You’re not doing well.”

“You must be a detective,” Barba shot back coldly.

“You’re getting more hang-ups and threatening texts,” she said, a reasoned guess given how quick he is to anger, now, with his nerves cut and frayed like live wires. “It is working.” 

Barba shook his head slowly, as if the idea had just occurred to him. He’d known stress all his life, but never like this, never without end. 

“I’ve had enough,” he said miserably. “When are they going to _do_ something?”

“Try something,” Benson corrected.

Barba felt his stomach constrict into knots. It sounded real when she said it.

It was instinct, then what he did next. Like feeling cornered in court, twisting under the ever-narrowing window of a case he’d come to shoulder. He went for the jugular. “I remember there was a time you were flagrantly threatened by a gang member. I breathed one word of protection and you shot me down. Your exact words were, _I don’t want to live like that._ ”

“That could be damning if you were taking my personal judgments to court,” Benson allowed. She remembered the day, remembered calling the gang’s bluff. That much had worked out for her. “But I understand you. It’s different when you’re left to imagine what could happen.”

Barba moved into something practiced, a line he’d been working on for just this occasion. “If it’s all the same to you, I’m feeling like the whole lunch-buddy routine is overplayed. I’m going to spend tomorrow at home.” 

It was his _run and hide_ strategy, but so precisely phrased that he could fall into the motions, find them calming by comparison, and be done with this ludicrous plot. 

Benson was ready for it, said, “I don’t recommend that. We want to build these guys’ confidence, and continuing to make you available will do that.”

Barba heard the reply for what it was--neither a mere statement of fact or a counterargument, but a command. A sharp-tongued _I don’t work for you_ tickled the back of his throat but, like so many things these days, Barba found it a useless act. Benson would win him over, she always did. 

“If you want to take me to dinner, Lieutenant, all you have to do is ask,” he teased, thinking at least he could win himself back a taste of his pride. 

“I have plans,” Benson returned smartly. “Carisi’s been busy testifying all week. He’s free now, he’ll do it.”

“Olivia…” _God,_ he was practically whining now.

“Please. Continue that thought.” Benson pressed her lips together, waited silently for a response that never came. She finished the rest of her cabernet. “And here I was thinking you’d have a good reason.” 

Barba didn’t allow himself the luxury of putting his head in his hands in embarrassment. Benson hadn’t even asked him outright, and he was struggling to keep his silence. He suddenly felt rotten for having told Carisi to do this, and then some. 

Then, when he touched idly on the idea of telling her himself and absolving him, it grasped him tight and wouldn’t let go. 

Barba kept his hands folded on the bartop, and though he felt himself droop slightly to meet them, he pulled his shoulders back, forcing his own presence. 

“It’s a so-so reason.”

“If you’re about to tell me he’s too enthusiastic--”

“Enthusiasm was never the issue,” Barba interrupted. He hated this and didn’t dare think about why. “You’ve seen him. Can you imagine him in bed? Because. I don’t have to.” 

He sucked down the rest of his drink as if his admission was a grease fire in his throat, still dangerous, though there were means still to dampen it. He glanced at her, more curious for her response than dreading it.

 _My suicidal streak,_ he noted plainly.

Benson, Barba thought, didn’t look particularly surprised. Maybe it was a product of the job, or else she’d simply mastered the tools of her trade: an unperturbed expression set on thinned lips, broken only to emit a cool and steady stream of inquiries. 

“When did this start?”

“Why, are we telling one another things now?” Barba said, unable to stop himself. The remark was downright catty, a needless dig at Benson's relationship with IAB’s Ed Tucker. She pulled back, expression hardened, but said nothing. Under her gaze and silence, Barba felt appropriately chastised.

Still, hers wasn’t quite the response he’d been expecting. They collectively forgave Barba of his overstep, and Barba rolled with what he'd been asked, saying, “Doesn’t matter. Already over.” 

“When he blew up at you a couple of weeks back,” Benson said, understanding smoothing her face.

“Okay, that? Uncalled for. As if my color scheme was really so offensive.” Barba scowled, signaled for another drink.

Benson ignored him, and was lost instead to her thoughts. “Do I need to prepare myself for his transfer?”

“What? No.” Barba sounded assured, though admittedly, he hadn’t given the possibility a single thought.

Unsatisfied, Benson pressed, “Because the parting was amicable or because he’s not going to complain?”

“There was no complaining.” Barba sighed, then, realizing he’d have to give her more than that-- _owed_ her more than that--he continued, “In fact,” he wagged a finger between himself and Benson, “This was all he wanted. To be able to tell you if you asked. I said no, let’s just cut our losses. He was--in hindsight--understandably… upset.” Barba smoothed down his tie, a green paisley-patterned number that brought out his eyes. “Not to put too fine a point on it.”

Benson gave him a look touched with sympathy, maybe even a little understanding. Barba knew it was more than he deserved. “Not so much the romantic, are you?”

“I really haven’t been myself for a while,” Barba said, though in truth his romantic life had become sluggish well before now. He always thought he’d master a command of his work at some point, then carve out the time to start something, maybe not comparable to the wide-eyed, open-hearted loves he’d once cultivated, but _something. Somebody._ He’d thought that, he realized, for over a decade. But there was no maintaining his workload, reputation, and lifestyle if another person’s well-being meant to elbow its way in. 

Barba had known as much for a while, now. The reality became its own self-imposed ruling, something that served to curb his appetite and narrow his eye. He didn’t know why he’d excused himself for Carisi.

So long as he was admitting transgressions against her staff, he surrendered another: “After Dodds… I tried to sell him on a job. Snatch him right out from under your nose, wouldn’t that have been a slice? Brooklyn, even.”

“Where you started.”

Barba would have thought he’d not want her to make that connection, but as it happened, he was fine with it. Relieved, even, that he didn’t have to say so himself. “I’ve still got some pull there. I thought he’d be a good fit. He passed on it, wanted to stay at SVU.” Barba made an open gesture with his hand as if to say, _you won._

Benson knew her detective for loyal, of that she had no doubt. Still, she didn’t fool herself into thinking he’d limit himself for just her and his most junior place on the squad. “Could be he wanted to keep working with you.”

Barba’s mouth moved as if to smile, but the gesture was hollow. “This… with me… it wouldn’t look good.” 

“For who?” 

Benson didn’t pull her punches. 

Thoughtlessly, Barba decided to do the same. 

“I have sex with men,” he said, cold and quiet as the first wave of a storm. Although hardly the first proclamation of its making, Barba nonetheless felt isolated in its sentiment. In desperate search of reassurance, he repeated himself. “I have sex with men, but I’ve only ever been in love with women.” 

His mouth twisted, like he’d tasted the words on his lips and knew they were wrong. He continued, dismantling his own line with a more honest interpretation of his own silence: “It’s a distinction without meaning. People don’t gossip over love.” 

Softly, and as if they were still speaking around a secret instead of into the gaping hole Barba put through it, Benson said, “I don’t think he’s the type to care about things like that.”

Carisi, again. At least Barba could speak to the man; he had never been without opinions, there. “What a kind way of saying he lacks even a shred of self-awareness.” 

“Seems you have plenty to go around.” 

“Yes, but sharing isn’t my forte.” 

“You’re looking out for him. Do you really expect me to believe you’d do that for any reason besides--”

“Besides the fact that I have a lot of time on my hands, all of a sudden?” Barba interrupted. He thought he was sparing her something. She gave him a funny look, a distant cousin to those she shot him in court when he went off on some suicidal means of winning their case. But a _twin,_ he realized, to the expressions she wore when she thought he was backing down. A look that saw cowardice when Barba was sure he was being pragmatic. 

“I can reschedule my plans tomorrow--”

“Don’t bother. Carisi probably deserves an apology.” Barba settled up at the bar, his and Benson’s costs, as well as a hefty tip. He wasn’t one for praying to god, but if karma earned him anything, he’d give it a shot.

He left his seat and donned his coat. The moves were swift and learned, though they sang through his body like instinct. Barba knew how to make an entrance and leave people wanting for the next. 

“And he’ll get paid to hear it,” he continued, his tone deceptively bright. “What a deal. It's almost like I'm doing him a favor.”

-

After the cab dropped him off and Benson walked him up--a necessity, she’d said, if only because his feet kept crossing--Barba found the rest of his night to be quiet. A pleasant consequence of his dulled senses, but pleasant all the same. 

With the addition of another couple of drinks, sleep found Barba well. 

Morning wasn’t so forgiving. He’d showered and had his first cup of coffee before even attempting to shave. 

He managed it, and with the addition of a fine suit, carefully drawn together in kaleidescope of colors and patterns, he slowly began to look--and feel--more like himself. 

He paced his apartment. _All dressed up but no place to go._ The former never bothered him; he preferred his uniform. Furthermore, he’d dressed with dinner in mind, and altogether dismissed any casual inclination brought about by the weekend. The ski weekends and boozy yacht afternoons seemed like a lifetime away, as far gone as impromptu drinks with colleagues and adversaries alike. Suddenly, amongst a slew of older professionals, the likes of which didn’t see their first computer until well after law school, e-mail seemed the preferred point of contact. 

Feeling rather archaic himself after the throbbing realization that he wasn’t so young anymore, himself, Barba wished he had the paper. Then, he spent half an hour agonizing over the fact that walking two blocks to the nearest bodega even gave him pause to begin with. 

His previous Saturday had been partially spent with Rollins. Barba felt foolish enough already living under constant supervision, but putting the burden of his safety on that of a new mother seemed doubly unfair. To that end, they’d ended up doing some of _her_ errands--grocery shopping, walking Frannie, and the like. Her child was with the sitter, perhaps for Rollins’ own benefit, or if only on the slim chance that one of Barba’s agitators chose to make good on all the threats--either way, there was no cause to have a child in tow.

Rollins had even convinced Barba to join her on a run, promised she was out of shape and wouldn’t go too fast, and that she’d really appreciate it. But even then, theirs wasn’t an entire day. They’d shared the time she’d needed for herself, but she returned to her child not like it was her duty, but as though she was spellbound.

Swept up in the memory, Barba found himself toying with his tie. He’d pulled it out from the snug fit under his vest and let it flop like a dead fish down his front. The ruined look made his lip curl, and yet he’d been the one to do it. He took off his jacket, unbuttoned and then wriggled free from his vest, smoothed down his tie, then went through the motions until the look was--again--pristine. 

He was _dressed,_ he realized, to go to work. 

Mouth pursed into a thin line, he first checked his phone for the usual hang-ups and threatening texts. He had slept through two, and their banality very nearly met and matched their vileness. Barba cleared the screen of his phone and called for a cab. 

Two blocks may have been a stretch, but he was a New Yorker. People could be firing heavy artillery at him as he went, but he could manage two feet of sidewalk. 

-

Barba was enjoying a quiet afternoon in his office, feet drawn up on his desk, chair tipped back, window cracked just enough to sift through the stale air and invigorate his senses. There was still-warm coffee within reaching distance and all that remained of a particularly divine breakfast bagel was a few toasted sesame seeds lost to the pages of a deposition. There was work to be done, and it had been much too long since that sentiment lit a fire inside Barba. 

Now, if the sun came out and filled his office, Barba could scarcely doubt he wouldn’t break into song.

He worked, undisturbed, until all of three in the afternoon. 

Detective Carisi practically skidded into his office after throwing open the door and then gawking--left, then right--for his target. His face visibly relaxed when he saw Barba.

Carisi wore a blue sweater and wrinkled slacks. Barba would hazard a guess that they were the same slacks Carisi wore the day before; they had the stale smell of court on them. The sweater was nice--new, even, given its tapered fit and unbunched sleeves. Maybe he was a touch underdressed for dinner, but Barba held his tongue on the matter. He got all this with one look, then lowered his gaze to the open folder in his lap. 

“Reservations are at eight,” he said, a catty reminder. 

“And I thought I’d be picking you up,” Carisi shot back, red-faced. “From your apartment, where you’re supposed to be. But here you are.”

“This office is safe,” Barba said, which was code for: _I’m allowed to be here._ The security staff were well aware of the threats against his life and checked in on him regularly. 

“What about the parking garage, huh?”

“I took a cab,” was Barba’s simple reply. Then, sharply, and because he _never could help himself,_ he said, “Funny thing about getting death threats, Detective. You learn to adapt fairly quickly.”

Carisi cocked his head, unimpressed. “After a nine month grace period, am I right?” 

Barba bit at the inside of his cheek. He’d been having one of the better mornings he could recall in recent months until this presumption of his time and attention. They could not longer ask that of one another. 

“If you seriously came here to pick a fight--”

Finally, Carisi faltered. He stepped fully through the threshold and closed the door behind him. Whatever sense of urgency that had propelled him into Barba’s office quickly left him, freed his shoulders so that they sagged in defeat. “No, I--sorry. Anyway. Traffic, you know,” he waved a hand, “I didn’t want to be stuck in it coming back to Manhattan on a Saturday night.” 

Barba said nothing. For a lie as weak as the one Carisi had just made, there was little else to do than stare in wonder. 

Carisi added, “I won’t bother you. I got a book.” 

Barba waited until he produced it--a small paperback, wrenched from the pocket of his coat--before allowing, “Fine.”

His office--always a grand thing, stately--suddenly felt homely for having company. Barba thought he would bristle at the disruption, but everything about Carisi’s long strides and awkward shuffling to make space for himself felt familiar and welcome. When he dropped onto the couch and sighed a sound more haggard than his years, Barba very nearly caught himself smiling. 

Carisi draped his coat over the arm of the couch, then reclined with his book. Barba was not used to Carisi failing to _loom_ over him at every opportunity. His height was only partly at fault; Carisi always got too close, hunched and slumped and made himself a physical part of any conversation. In Barba’s estimation, it wasn’t the kind of skill that found itself welcomed outside of the bedroom.

Pen in hand, Barba rolled his shoulders, then pitched forward, tucked back into his work. There was more than enough to keep him occupied, and he resolved to not let himself become distracted. His willpower held out for nearly an hour before, while rereading a particularly wordy statute and scribbling notes, he glanced upward, outward, to take in the sight of his office. He saw that Carisi had traded his book for a deposition from one of Barba’s two stagnant piles. 

“Carmen had a family reunion in Poughkeepsie,” Barba said aloud into the silence. His pen never left the legal pad on which he was scratching away. “Otherwise, she’d be here.” 

Carisi was quiet for a moment, then said, “I know. We have her schedule, same as yours.” 

Eyes narrowed, Barba lifted his pen from paper. “So which is it? Did you come here because you knew I’d be alone, or because you, a New Yorker, were anxious about traffic?”

Carisi set his jaw. There was no lesser evil of the two to cop to, and both he and Barba knew it. He stood, surrendered: “I’ll sit outside.”

“Sit here.” Barba made the offer, gestured to a seat across from his own, and _smiled_ well before he could think better of any of it. He covered his own ass quickly, adding, “Help me with this or we’ll never make the reservation.”

Both actively chose to pretend it was like it sounded--a simple work order, nothing more. They’d done as much in a professional capacity, when Carisi shadowed Barba for a case his unit had caught. There was nothing questionable about it, save for how much Barba did not want to stomach the responsibility of playing teacher, lawyer, and babysitter all in one. He’d even had to sign what amounted to a permission slip, which Carisi presented without so much as a hint of shame.

That was the first time. There had been others. 

There had been offhanded offers of help when the day was done and drinks were to be had, but paperwork would inevitably stall Barba’s ability to make an appearance. Carisi would find cause to stay, bursting forth with a good-natured--if presumptuous-- _No problem, Counselor. Let me help, we’ll knock it out in half an hour!_

More recently, there were late nights in Barba’s apartment, where their bodies were loose from sex, but their minds keyed up and eager for some other stimulant. Barba was loathe to admit it, but Carisi knew how to help.

Carisi took the proffered seat. The sleeves went up to his elbows immediately, and Barba wasn’t sorry to see the neat lines ruined. At least, not in pursuit of this.

Carisi dutifully read through Barba’s notes to catch up, and flipped open Barba’s laptop to begin typing without being asked to do so. It was something he’d learned from Barba himself--if there was a means of _doing something_ while _doing something_ else, _do it._

“I can’t read your writing,” he said, stalled in the middle of transcribing the fourth page of Barba’s handwritten notes. “What’s this word?”

Barba leaned over, read the word upside down. “Acumen.” 

“Huh.”

“Do you need a definition?” Barba asked, his tone naturally slipping towards superiority. 

“No. But half the jury might. Don’t trip on your way down from your Ivory Tower to give it.”

Barba’s mouth twisted in delight. “I need your fingers not your lip, Carisi.” 

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Keep typing.”

It was ultimately too friendly an exchange for where they were at, circling one another from a safe distance. Both men realized this, and silence soon followed. 

Barba tapped his pen to join in the lightening-fast procession of his thoughts. He stalled, and asked the one thing that hadn’t actually been on his mind.

“Liv tells me you’ve been busy in court.”

“Yeah. Couple of… tough, real tough ones. Kids. Oh, man, this one kid--Darnell. He’s great. So great. The best. Smart as a whip, testified like a champ last week.” The wide smile that had opened Carisi’s face and touched every feature quickly faded. “His parents, though.” Carisi was silenced by the displeased look on Barba’s face. Carisi bristled, said, “You asked.”

“I didn’t think you’d actually been in court. I thought Liv was just saying that.” Barba frowned, wondered why he’d even presumed otherwise. “Last week, you said? I didn’t see you.”

Carisi shrugged. “I saw you.” 

Barba tried to settle back into his work, but couldn’t make sense of the words. Even the profound legal mandates spilled open before him read like a child’s stilted writing, uninspired, and unable to captivate him. His attention pivoted, then swung back to Carisi. 

“What were you reading?”

He’d brought the book with him when he’d relocated to Barba’s desk, perhaps as a prop. _See,_ its presence seemed to say on behalf of the detective, _I’m not so eager._

“It’s about gay people.”

Barba squinted at the cover. It was academic, the title spit into at least three parts, one of which was a rather brash play on word the _discontent,_ and the author was a woman. Barba corrected, “It’s about lesbians.”

Carisi blushed. “Yeah, I--got that. Pretty quick.” 

“Well. I hope it’s enlightening.”

At five, Carisi left and brought back two coffees. 

At five-thirty, Barba could not hold his tongue any longer. 

“This is good,” he said, but did not specify whether he meant the work they’d done, the progress they’d made, or simply their company, traded easily between them. He watched with some remorse as Carisi twisted his mouth into silence and said nothing in return.

At seven-fifteen, Carisi asked, “So, dinner. You want to take a cab or walk?”

“Walk,” Barba said, if only because doing so would mean they’d leave now, and he wouldn’t be stuck in his office, _those words,_ unmet and ignored, looming overhead. 

He dressed hastily--straightening his tie, donning his vest, jacket, and overcoat. A purely decorative scarf (itself serendipitously matched to Barba’s outfit) completed the look.

Carisi was already at the door, trying to look impatient. 

They walked out of the building together, Carisi leading and playing lookout. He took his task seriously, and Barba felt it like some grand performance being made just to his left. It grated on his nerves.

“You could try smiling,” Barba said.

“And give up the ruse?” 

Barba sighed, stopped walking. When Carisi turned to face him, Barba said his peace: “I’m not out to deliver some bullshit line-- _here’s the date you wanted._ I’m sorry you got roped into this. I know it isn’t fair.” 

He plowed ahead, chin up, shoulders back, as though he hadn’t given as near an apology as he had. Stunned, Carisi fell behind. He jogged to catch up, then fell into step with Barba. 

“I still want to protect you, Counselor. That hasn’t changed.”

“Rafael,” Barba said, his gaze set dead ahead. “Or won’t you say my name anymore?”

“I dunno. I kind of got the impression you snatched it right out of my mouth.” Carisi ducked his head. “Sorry. I’m not… mad. You were right. I understand.”

“I was wrong,” Barba admitted at the exact moment Carisi said, “I’m seeing somebody.”

“Oh?” Barba started in, hoping to bury his admission under the weight of Carisi’s news. 

“I mean, we’ve been on two dates. She’s nice.”

“She,” Barba echoed. He could have laughed. “How many ways, do you think--and you can round to the nearest ten--did I set you straight?”

“Ha, ha,” Carisi said, but was turning pink in the cheeks, anyway. He composed himself--or tried to, because he never could manage not to keep the truth out of his mouth. “Uh, no. It’s almost harder now.” 

Barba cocked his head, made a wide-eyed, pursed-lipped face he didn’t dare present to Carisi. “Um.”

If Carisi recognized his error, if he even gleaned one strange glimpse of what he’d said as it stood, a veritable canyon before them, he did not show it. He kept on, meaning to cross its depths, so assured he’d reach the other side. 

“You know, when I was a kid I really wanted to be a priest. Trusted, respected, knowledgeable… and ‘cause they couldn’t ever have sex.”

“Not one of their biggest selling points, but sure.” How he managed to answer neutrally was beyond him; Barba was _mortified._

Carisi continued, slow and strained, as if he had to pluck the words one by one out of his chest. “I used to think… people wouldn’t look at me funny if I never got married, if I was a priest.” 

Suddenly, they weren’t walking anymore. Carisi had veered off the sidewalk and stood atop a corner of green space hugging a statue--Barba didn’t bother to look up and see which one. Men on horses were only ever liberators-soon-to-be-conquerors. Names and faces were of no consequence. 

“So you are,” Barba said, leaving _the word_ for Carisi to supply for himself. At least in this, Barba was not quick to judge; he’d taken his sweet time, too, when it came to acknowledging his own heartfelt wants and desires. The notion to alter or deny was so readily available in a young man’s mind, but the tools to master it came with adulthood, where every choice was a compromise. 

He glanced at Carisi and saw that he was shaking his head, but saying nothing.

As if he was handling an uncooperative witness, Barba pressed, “You're…” 

“I’m not,” Carisi concluded with no lack of conviction. Where he stumbled was the followup: “She’s nice.”

 _More time then,_ Barba thought, none too magnanimously. “Isn’t that what they say about all great loves,” he tutted, the words running slick off his tongue, “They’re so _nice._ ”

“Well, they don’t say it about Assistant District Attorneys.” 

Barba smiled, showed no teeth. Carisi earned that one. 

“It’s not for me to judge,” he said, and ignored the soft _pfft_ of disbelief from Carisi as he switched lanes so drastically, “But you deserve more than _nice._ ” 

“I’ll take that under consideration, Counselor.” 

Barba frowned, wondered if Carisi’s roadblock was that old standard, Catholicism. Although not raised in the faith, Barba had--with every other youth living in some low-income barrio--attended Catholic school. He knew the language, the motions, the frantic twisting one’s soul had to do to come out of there clean. 

Another part of Barba told him that was a cop out, and what really turned Carisi off men wasn’t fear for his immortal soul, but something more grounded. Simple cruelty could do the trick. A man could forget what he’d learned or reason it away, but being made to feel disposable was its own form of gospel. 

There was no truer hymn than, _Not me. Never again._

Ever the devil’s advocate, Barba said, “You know, there’s a lot of leeway. Maybe read another book.”

-

Arriving at the restaurant did more to constrict their conversation topics than Barba could have hoped for. It was upscale, hip, and smelled divine. A French songstress’ pitchy wails lilted dreamily through the space. The giant painting of caligula’s court was there, Barba thought, only somewhat ironically. 

While checking their coats, Barba gave Carisi a look as if to say, _You can’t be a priest in here._

They were lead to a small table and Barba had ordered drinks before his ass hit the seat. 

“It’s a nice night,” Carisi said, a thought he’d had only after stepping in from outside. His cheeks were still stung red from the air. 

“It’s cold.”

Carisi cracked a small smile, and Barba remembered it too--the evening, really not so long ago, that the heat had taken a shit in Barba’s building, and they’d spent the night freezing under heaps of blankets, drawn close together, Carisi in a borrowed pair of woolly socks.

“I suppose it’s too much to ask,” Barba started, slow, and as if he could read Carisi’s mind, “To know if you’d ever want,” he smoothed his tie, omitted the explanation neither man needed, “Again. Eventually.”

Carisi held his gaze but said nothing.

“It’s an open invitation,” Barba said this much part-way into his glass of scotch, as if the words could soak up the smell and become more palatable. “Think about it, maybe someday you won’t hate me anymore.”

“I don’t hate you now.”

Barba looked away, back to Caligula. “But not now,” he guessed.

“No,” Carisi agreed. 

“Because,” Barba started, forcing Carisi to finish.

“She’s nice.”

Barba made idle conversation about the case he was working on and Carisi--having read up on it all afternoon--gamely jumped in, offering his own insights and unsolicited suggestions. It was, again, so pleasantly familiar that Barba wished they were sitting in silence. He kept reaching for things, only to have his hand slapped. He used to know better than to test fate.

His phone buzzed and the conversation died.

_[If a bullet tore thru ur head right now, do you think ur boyfriend would scream?]_

_[I’m close enough 2 hear it]_

Barba felt sick. He imagined their food arriving, eating while these words went untended. He was nearly nauseous at the thought. He threw back the rest of his scotch, leaned over the table and said, “We’re leaving.”

He stood, fished his wallet from his pocket and pulled a few bills to cover their drinks.

Carisi, brow furrowed, stood to meet him. He put a hand on Barba’s arm to stay his harried plans for departure. “Barba--hey. Slow down.”

 _“Look.”_ Barba all but threw his phone across the table. He decided it was _not_ as a result of how much his hands were shaking. 

He watched as Carisi read the texts, hoping to see his own fear reflected back in the eyes of another. He'd been indulged--pacified--but what Barba wanted now was vindication. 

Carisi wet his lips, said only, “This is what we want.”

His voice was practiced and flat. 

“ _I_ don’t want this,” Barba spat, and snatched back his phone. “I want to go home. We’re stopping this. Fucking _ridiculous,_ anyway.”

Barba remembered how cocky he’d been, approached and threatened so plainly on the courthouse steps, just seconds after he was intimidated-- _We know all about you, stuff you wouldn’t want people to know._ \--and then served with a threat. He'd given his address, told the messenger to go ahead, take his shot. 

Barba had dreams about falling, after that. His attitude was all for naught when he wasn't of a mind to wield it. In his dreams, he watched the world go vertical as he spun out off its axis. He always awoke the moment his skull split like rotten fruit.

What he wouldn't give for those to stop. 

The messenger was behind bars. These voices, who made their threats explicit and varied, were still out there, and closing in. 

“Fine,” Carisi said as he met Barba at the coat check. It wasn't as though Barba was going to give him the luxury of a choice. The attendant didn't question their hasty departure, and they were out on the street before Carisi took Barba by the arm and spoke again. “Got to make a detour, first.”

They took a roundabout means uptown, nearly passing Bryant Park before sidestepping onto its grounds. Carisi led him through the park, and despite the beautiful cascade of street lamps lighting their way amidst the drying foliage, Barba knew it was no lovers lane.

“You’re trying to get him to step out someplace less crowded,” Barba accused. “You’re still on this insane fishing expedition--”

Carisi squeezed his arm, and Barba knew without asking that Carisi believed someone was following them. 

“Text the Lieutenant,” Carisi said. “Bryant Park, Americas and 41st.”

“That’s not where we are,” Barba snapped, but was already sending the message. They'd come from the south, but there hugging the eastern side where the Public Library stood, a behemoth of architecture and history. 

“Sit down here,” Carisi said, stopping at a bench. 

“Carisi--”

“Get comfortable.”

“You’re drawing him out,” Barba accused again, wanting confirmation. He hissed, “We’re sitting ducks!”

Carisi did not cede to either point. “We’ll be here maybe half an hour. Give Liv and everybody time to set up. We start to head out, he takes his chance, we get the jump on him.” Then, looking at Barba like he knew he owed the man a preemptive apology, Carisi said, “Stop looking like I’ve got you here against your will.”

“You _do._ ”

“If nothing comes of it, what’s the worst that can happen?”

“I go home with a new ulcer, I guess.” Barba sat petulantly on the bench. Even through his coat and slacks, he felt the cold of the worn wooden panels as though he'd sat bare-assed and legs spread. “I’m cold.”

Carisi sat down beside him and slung an arm around Barba’s shoulders. 

“Don’t,” Barba started to say, then received another text.

_[Cozy?]_

Carisi felt Barba's anxiety radiate off him in waves. He lifted his chin, raised his head to keep from drowning. “Just. Talk to me.”

Carisi felt Barba's shoulders quake, as if he was laughing. “Talk to you? Really? That's your advice? Have I offended you _so egregiously_ that you're willing to induce heart failure to teach me a lesson?”

“You want me to talk to you, then?”

Barba's next breath escaped him as a mushroom cloud, silent but devastating. Engulfed in it was his answer, a measly, _“Yes.”_

Carisi seemed to dig deep for something to say, and then braced himself for its hearing. “I lied. I didn't figure out the book was about lesbians until, like, two chapters in.”

Barba gave him a withering look, but at the same time nearly bit through the flesh of his inner cheek trying not to smile. Now was not the time. 

They sat on the bench, Barba’s left thigh pressed to Carisi’s right because Carisi had put himself between Barba and whomsoever might have followed them from the restaurant. It _was_ almost cozy, to borrow a phrase. But the night was too cold to linger this way, and Barba’s blood was pumping so fast so as to give him vertigo where he sat. 

The strangest things, Barba thought, were the passersby. Pairs of them moved in and out of darkness, coming to life under the curled lamps above their hands and then fading away into soft laughter or quiet conversation as they passed. A girl with earbuds but no music playing too long, swift steps out of sight. And older man walked a rotund terrier. Barba studied their faces, Carisi watched their hands. Some glanced at them--two older men sitting stupid on a park bench--but no more than that. 

Young and old, they were only people. Barba had long felt he was looking over his shoulder for something else. 

Their wait stretched on until the moment Carisi received a text from Benson signaling their readiness to meet them. The moment they stood, Barba received another text. 

_[Don’t go too far]_

He stuffed his phone into his pocket and tried to ignore how, if he’d pocketed a bomb instead, there’d be little to no distinction.

The park was not without its visitors--smiling couples cutting through, hardcore joggers, students making a mad-dash for any open outlets at the Public Library. 

They walked side-by-side in silence, both listening for tails. Carisi’s arm had slipped from Barba’s shoulders and settled readily at the man’s own hip. He was ready to pull his sidearm at a moment’s notice. 

The park opened up to the Avenue of the Americas, and as Carisi took longer strides, Barba moved to keep up. Carisi’s hand went to Barba’s back, then his mouth to Barba’s ear. He whispered: _“Go.”_

Barba felt like his own beating heart sped out ahead of him, and he could only chase it. He managed only a few steps, stopped, and turned to see officers emerge from the shadows and move in, slow and silent, in search of Barba’s assailant. It was like watching a swarm of ants descend on some mightier prey. In their numbers, nothing stood a chance. Carisi fell back among them, disappearing into the dark, his gun drawn. 

Barba wet his lips, confused, concerned. “Wait…” 

A hand found his shoulder and drew him back despite his initial efforts to twist out of it. Barba saw that it was Fin, dressed casually save for a bulletproof vest. He thrust an identical vest into Barba’s hands and motioned for Barba to follow him further outside the park, but again Barba hesitated. He stared dumbly at the vest and thought, _Carisi doesn’t have one._

Officers flooded the park in a way Barba could only find comparable to old television newsreels from the frontlines of some skirmish or another. Armed with firepower and an order, these men and women were headed into war on his behalf. If nothing else, the sight planted Barba’s feet more firmly to the ground, and he bore witness. 

The late hour surrounded them. Where Barba was once fond of the darkness--which previously granted him solitude in his youth and peace during his studies--he only saw the unfathomable depths of possibility. No longer was there something in it he could find for himself; he had grown to be concerned with what could find _him._

Time must have crept underfoot, because Barba did not feel it pass before his eyes. Eventually, the officers staged a slow retreat, like children being called in by their mothers for supper. Night vision gear was slung uselessly around their necks, guns were pointed towards the ground or otherwise holstered. 

Playtime was over.

Barba could hardly believe what he was seeing. They came back empty handed, all of them. He’d expected _something._ A shadowy figure being dragged away and deemed a suspect, or at the very least a hat dropped from his head, a jacket torn from his back, something to suggest this nightmare had a form. 

None came. Officers spilled from the park looking bored and annoyed.

Inexplicably, Barba felt his heart pound faster. Here was the danger--not that there hadn’t been a threat, but that it had slipped free. 

There _had_ been someone, he was certain of it. If there wasn’t, Barba wouldn’t know what to think. He’d forever doubt his own mind and senses. Never mind the completely primal feeling of dread that had found him in the park--for the pointed and timely texts alone, Barba would have wagered his _life_ that there was someone stalking him from the restaurant and onward. He felt like he _had_ wagered that.

He imagined the guy having skirted detection, pictured him off somewhere, laughing himself silly over the whole spectacle. 

Barba slumped against a squad car, feeling dizzy and red-faced and defeated. More than anything, he was tired. 

He felt like a fool for being so unnerved by a few texts. He hated that he’d been party to this shitshow, hated that Carisi had fed into his paranoia when he ought to have known better. 

Carisi, looking contrite, was one of the last to abandon the sting. He slunk over to Barba and did not say a word to the obvious failed mission. He offered instead to see him home. Without missing a beat, Barba declined.

“Are you completely stupid or is that just for my benefit?” he snapped, and held up a single finger to stall any protest. “You wasted my time and I’ve wasted theirs. I’m going home.”

“I’ll walk you--”

_“No.”_

“Come on, Counselor--”

What finally did it, Barba would later realize, what flipped the switch inside his head to dismiss reason and embrace only what he felt, was one simple thing. Not Carisi’s tone of voice or open-handed pleading, but his _audacity._ When Barba knew Carisi to back down with the best of them in other respects, but in _this,_ when it came to Barba’s last shred of sanity, the detective suddenly could not accept defeat. 

No. It seemed he wanted it all. 

Barba pushed off the car and said slowly and plainly: “I’m going home, I hope, to have the massive heart attack I so deserve, triggered by whatever coronary disturbance was giftwrapped for me here-- _I thank you_ \--so that the last thing I do in my life is reach the absolute _pinnacle_ of ironies. Because frankly? I don’t think I’m there yet. By the looks on your blank fucking faces, this is totally normal. Standard. Operating. Procedure.” Barba drew in a final breath and finished, “Goodnight.”

He stalked off through the corral of police vehicles, when an officer--bright-eyed, redheaded under his hat, just another disinterested face in the crowd--stopped him. 

“Mr. Barba? I’m supposed to give you a ride?” he said, sounding young and uncertain. He favored a dopey half-smile that reminded Barba of Carisi. He held up his hands as if to ward off a fight; he’d heard Barba’s meltdown. Who in a three-block radius hadn’t? “Just my order.”

The young officer looked out over Barba’s shoulder and waved towards where Benson, Carisi, and the others were still gathered, stood uselessly in the middle of their error. Benson had called in the calvary, why not a ride home? 

Absently, Barba muttered, “Thank you,” and allowed himself to be ushered into the back of the young officer’s squad car. He had never intended to walk, and getting a cab when the roads were blocked by police vehicles seemed a stretch. 

“Kind of a mess out there,” the officer observed, and Barba noted that he took the passenger seat. He didn’t respond, however. Instead, Barba started in on his phone, searching for a work-related e-mail that had found him an hour or so ago, just to have something to focus on.

The car cleared the traffic and joined the masses heading north. Barba felt as much just sitting there. He knew more of New York with his chin tucked to his chest, eyes on his phone. He didn’t need a view of it, too. 

When a hand reached back and snatched up his Blackberry, Barba stared at his empty hands, dumbfounded.

“You haven’t been answering our texts, Counselor.”

-

It didn’t make sense. The words seemed waterlogged and bloated, hardly like English at all. In the same breath, nor were they Spanish. There was no love to be found in the crafting of those vowels and consonants. Strung together in that order, all that they made was a noose. Barba stared blankly ahead and felt as though he’d offered up his measurements. 

His heart sank through his stomach, bottomed out somewhere along 3rd Avenue.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard him,” the officer driving said. 

The danger he’d sensed in the park hadn’t made a hasty play. It was smarter. It didn’t wait for him at his apartment building. No, it bided its time. It was _driving him there._

Barba understood immediately. These men had figured Carisi’s play, maybe cut short and circled around the park just in time to become a part of the blue wave that stood to crush Barba’s assailants. Then, easy as a smile, they’d offered him a ride. They’d been indistinguishable from any of the loyalists on Benson’s side, and because that’s where they’d stationed themselves, he’d willingly gone with them. 

Against reason, Barba tried the door. It was a police issued vehicle, but it may as well have been a coffin. 

He didn’t say another word. He imagined this to be a tasteless joke, or a hallucination of his own making. His breaking point told in such a way that Barba himself was only a tertiary character, sat with a backseat view of his own mental collapse. 

When they pulled up to his apartment building, Barba still did not know the score.

They said, “Invite us up.”

He said, “No. I won’t.”

They both moved to pull their sidearms, but the driver got there first. There was no further discussion. 

The doorman smiled at the officers with some sympathy; he’d never been a fan of Barba, who never met a door he didn’t burst through. Always on his phone, he’d hardly said two words to the man. Selfishly, Barba regretted that now.

He tried to be seen looking agitated on the security cameras, as if there was a soul behind each of them that could recognize his terror in real time. But the driver slung an arm over his shoulders, real buddy-buddy. Barba knew he had been the one in the park, spying on him and Carisi. 

The move came with a gun pressed against his side, but it might as well have been a canon. 

When they reached his floor, the arm over Barba’s shoulder slipped, dragged, and left only a hand at his neck. The fingers alone seemed to control him, narrow his vision and guide his slow progression of steps towards the inevitable. 

At his door, Barba fumbled with his key--not an intentional move, although the tightening grip on his neck would have him believe otherwise. Was he not doing this? Acting without thought to do so in whatever attempt he could manage to preserve his own life? One officer entered first, cased the place. The other had to drag Barba-- _No, no, no_ \--through the threshold. 

Barba stumbled when entering. It was as though his own limbs knew better than to enter a place that only promised harm. In the part of his mind that always worked an angle, he dragged his foot with the vain hope that the doormat would catch, and keep his door from closing completely. He did not dare glance back to see if he’d been successful for fear of tipping off his assailants. It had either worked or it hadn’t, but so long as he didn’t know the outcome, there was hope.

They led him to the long table in his apartment, sat him at his preferred seat. 

_I eat here,_ he wanted to protest. _And read the paper and work and basically do all of my living here._

He thought, in a vision of hopefulness that surprised even him, _Maybe someone will come._ Benson, to regroup. Carisi, to reconnect. Barba had made the offer, after all.

Of the two officers, Barba realized he'd seen their faces. Not before, but _now._ The tall, pale driver with the thin lips. The shorter redhead with the bright blue eyes, friendly and inoffensively youthful enough to draw him into their trap. They meant to kill him. He felt like sobbing, but was relieved. He knew, now. Finally. 

His lips parted. He couldn’t feel the breath pass over them. It was as if he was dead already. 

“Are you even real cops?” he said, because being ornery had always been his first--and last, he supposed--resort. “Or did your mothers sew your costumes?”

A dizzying crack against the side of his head left him briefly without sight or sense. He only knew pain, white-hot and all-encompassing. There was a deafening ringing between his ears, like the distant echoes of thunder. The sound reached so far back Barba believed his own self to be infinite. 

The act hardly justified his cosmic ponderings. 

He’d been struck across the temple with the thin-lipped officer’s gun, and only realized as much when the offending firearm was then pointed between his eyes. 

“Dipshit, now look at him,” the shorter officer said, calling out his partner. 

“It's fine,” the other officer-- _Donaldson,_ Barba could clearly read his first initial and last name on the breast pocket of his uniform. _J. Donaldson._ \--insisted. Then, with the impunity he believed to charge through his veins same as his blood, he pressed the muzzle of the gun to the reddening welt on the side of Barba's face. He twisted the piece, choosing a better angle. “That's where he'll blow his own brains out.”

Barba couldn't hear himself beg to the contrary. The sound of his own thudding heartbeat was too great. 

A staged suicide. Amidst visions of beatings or more pronounced threats, worse thoughts had still gnawed at him in the squad car, but Barba had dismissed them. _Impossible,_ he’d thought. _Unconscionable. Cruel._

Another voice stirred within him, perhaps dislodged by the pistolwhipping. It was grim, and with good reason. It seemed to know everything coming. 

_Think again._

“I’m going to kill myself with _your gun?_ ” Barba said, unable to bite his tongue, or at the very least rein in the attitude. “What did I do? Disarm you? Because I would know how to do that? I don’t own a gun. I would never. I don’t.”

His incredulous tone did nothing to dissuade officer Donaldson from smiling and offering to the contrary: “Sure you do.”

Everything next happened slow.

With his free hand, Donaldson pulled a small revolver from the back of his trousers. It was small, practically ornamental, when most of what Barba saw on a daily basis was nondescript and police-issue. This was something else. It looked like a crime in and of itself. He instinctively pulled back when Donaldson held it before him.

“Ain’t she a beaut? Real fancy. Thought you’d appreciate that I didn’t get you some gangbanger piece. Got the papers right here.” 

He raised his chin, and his fellow officer withdrew forged paperwork speaking to his ownership of the revolver from a ziplock bag. When he opened it, Barba realized he could smell what had previously occupied the bag: chocolate chip cookies, homemade with a touch too much butter. 

“A man’s got to protect himself,” Donaldson added. He looked to his partner again.

Along with the papers, the other man retrieved a small box. “Hold this,” he said to Barba, but dropped it shy of Barba’s tentative grasp. 

Barba about leaped out of his skin. The box hit the table and its contents spilled out, rolling and spinning onto the floor. 

Ammunition. 

Barba felt his mouth go dry. Then, he felt the gun--on paper, _his gun_ \--press against the bruising along the side of his head.

“Pick them up,” Donaldson ordered, and swept the proof of purchase documents to the floor as well. Barba, aware that he was being forced to spread his fingerprints over planted evidence, could figure no way around it, save but to take his time. 

He pushed back his chair slowly, sank to his knees on the floor, and collected the bullets one by one. His palm became full and sweaty with them. He imagined they were sticks of dynamite that could go off at the slightest disturbance. 

He saw the shorter officer tap his foot impatiently. 

Barba felt inexplicably offended. What was he to do? Hurry, and meet his death? Or stall, and tempt fate? Something like laughter rolled to the back of his throat, and he imagined hearing it usher forth and shatter reality, same as the bullets gathered in his hands.

He sat back on his heels. The reality of returning to a seat at the table was suddenly too great a thing to overcome. Barba began to shake his head in violent bursts, back and forth, and wholly out of his own control. 

“You don’t have to do this,” he said, small at first but again, louder. “You don’t have to do this. You can walk away.”

“We will,” Donaldson said with confidence. Then, he squatted where he stood, knees splayed open, elbows out, sidearm still held at the ready. He cocked his head, searching until Barba had no choice but to look him in the eye. “We’ll circle the block and be back in time for when the units called to your location roll up, drawn by reports of a single gunshot.” He forged an ugly little frown. “Gosh. I certainly hope someone reports it. Otherwise, you’ll spend the weekend rotting, your brains turning to shit and leaking out your smug little face.”

Barba must have flinched. He couldn’t feel anything save for the buzzing between his ears, but he knew he’d done something to invite Donaldson’s hand, open, warmly clapping his cheek as though they were family. 

“Don’t get too down about it. I’m sure the papers will run a more forgiving picture.” 

Donaldson’s heavy hand dragged from Barba’s cheek to the nape of his neck. He squeezed. As he stood, Barba stood.

“Up, Counselor. On your feet. You’re not dead yet.” 

Barba dropped back into his seat. He felt weighed down by the coat and suit jacket he was still wearing. Sweat began to bead along his brow and sting where the sheer force of being struck in the head had torn the skin, caused it to welt, bunch, and curl. 

He opened his hand and let the last of the bullets he’d collected drop into their container. He realized they’d make him load the gun.

Barba had never wondered if he could shoot another human being. He decided not to start now. If given the chance, it wouldn’t do to reason premeditation on any account. 

“Why are you-- _I don’t even know you.”_

The air seemed to have been drawn from the room, and suddenly their brains were all starved for it and acting foolishly for its absence. Donaldson slammed his fist on the table, very nearly crushing Barba’s hand in the process. 

“You’re goddamn right! You don’t know any of us cops, or the shit we put up with out there! We do our job and all people like you see is an opportunity to make yourself a name. Play crusader. We’re _dying out there._ And what do we get for protecting our own? Guys like you, _guys who ain’t shit,_ telling us we’re out of line.”

Donaldson shoved Barba’s head--not an overly violent gesture, but an aggressive move nonetheless. Barba certainly did not move to retaliate. 

But his mouth didn’t follow suit. Whatever ideas Barba had for keeping himself alive, they did not involve the burying of his principles or acquiescing to the ramblings of his would-be assassin. Barba listened to the rant and took it to its natural conclusion, finding the vendetta against him was a simple one. His place in Donaldson’s mind--the ire it afforded him--was coincidental. 

Shakily, Barba said: “That young man didn’t have to die.”

Donaldson looked affronted at the thought, as if they both weren’t deeply aware Barba held those convictions, and passionately argued exactly that. To hold them _now_ was pointless. Donaldson had wholly expected Barba to fold. 

Donaldson shoved Barba again, this time with such force that Barba nearly toppled off of his chair. Only the hand fisted into the slack of his coat and jacket stayed his fall. 

Barba grit his teeth as he was shouted at not an inch from his face. Spit hit his eye, his cheek, even mixed with the blood beginning to drip from his temple as Donaldson screamed, “He did! And so-fucking-what! He was a threat to my brothers. He had to die!”

Donaldson released his hold on Barba, took a step back. He stared and seemed to contemplate the vision before him, whether it compared to his hopes and expectations. He’d made the Counselor for a dignity-in-death type, but meant to shake him, yet. Seeing a grown man cry was half the fun.

He stalked the living room, moved so assuredly it was as though he’d been there countless times before. He inspected everything Barba owned, though he wisely touched nothing. He read took titles and judged Barba’s record collection. It was just another means of invading Barba’s sanity: he’d enter his thoughts, his nightmares, his home. He’d made himself a presence long before now, so where he stood was somehow familiar to him by Barba’s own doing. 

“You’re a threat,” he said, a vision of serenity after the previous bout of spittle-soaked raving. He returned to face Barba, smiled as he opened Barba’s coat front and pulled the silk pocket square from his suit jacket. He returned to the bookshelf with it spread open over his hand so as to obscure any prints he might leave on Barba’s personal effects. 

He returned again, holding a prize: a framed photograph of Barba, his mother, and his abuela. They were all considerably younger, as the image was taken after Barba had tried--and won--his first big case. Barba wore an ill-fitting suit in grey, nary a pattern or shock of color to be seen. Barba remembered that day. His abuela hugged him so tight she’d put a permanent wrinkle in the jacket. He’d had the audacity to be annoyed about it for weeks to come. 

Barba met Donaldson’s eyes next he spoke.

“If you ever really believed that guy wasn’t just another piece of shit, good for you. You’ll be in good company.” Donaldson put the photo in front of Barba, choosing its position with care. He was setting a scene, after all. “Mom and grandma, too. Look at that. Adorable.”

Barba did not want to look at their faces, but couldn’t help himself. They were smiling, proud. Even his mother was beaming, her lips holding back some word of commendation he’d wanted to hear his entire life. He’d had so many opportunities, but the compliment always seemed to be swept away by a breeze, angled instead at his friends and colleagues. The look on his own face in the photo was clear: _Here’s my chance._

“What was his name, again?”

Barba wet his lips, kissed his chance goodbye. “Terrence Reynolds.”

“That’s right. Say hi for me.”

Barba had never had to argue for a stay of execution, much less his own. The words were difficult to find, harder still to say. Did they not make him complicit? Injecting his own ideas into the scheme--wasn’t he going along? 

These weren’t legal questions in Barba’s mind. They were everything but. 

_How do I live?_ It was the question for the matter at hand, but another swept in to overpower it: _If I do this, if it works, how do I live with myself?_

Quiet and defeated, he said, “Let me at least write a note.”

Donaldson cocked the revolver. “Not fucking happening.”

It took every ounce of strength in him--and more, drawn from places Barba had never known--not to weep as he spoke. “I run my mouth for a living. How will it look if that stops today?”

Donaldson cracked a smile. He looked to his younger partner and nodded. “See, he’s about as smart as they say.”

They gave him what was on hand--a legal pad. Barba did not move to grab the pen he knew was tucked neatly inside the breast pocket of his coat. He savored the minute it took his captors to find another. 

He started in Spanish-- _Me disculpo_ \--and they tore the paper out of his hands. 

“In English, motherfucker,” Donaldson said. Then, “Now.”

“I don't know how to start,” Barba said weakly, but put his pen to paper, and tried. 

It sickened him more than the prospect of death at this point, but he wrote to his mother, his _mami_ : _‘Finally, I will see my father again.’_ Better than any cleverly hidden code, it was this line that would steer Benson towards the truth. The line smacked of it. These were not his thoughts, his death not a deed by his own hand. 

He stopped, after writing it, and wondered uselessly if there was another way. His mother would cry, reading that line, knowing how much his father had hurt him. It would be one final reminder that she had never been able to stop it. He wanted to spare her that. 

_‘I know you tried,’_ he wrote, but got no further. 

Donaldson, who held the gun to the base of Barba’s skull, was also reading over his shoulder. A shadow of violence spilled over Barba’s words as he ripped the page off the notepad, stuffed it into his pockets, and warned, “Don’t try that shit. Or we’ll walk you up to the roof, and end this now.”

It was an empty threat, loaded only with hot air and backed by previously determined intent. They’d planned this, brought another gun on which to plant Barba’s fingerprints after they’d done the deed. They would not waste these efforts only to give him a little shove. Where was the satisfaction, there?

“Okay, yes, fine,” Barba said, feeling rushed all the same. The method of his death seemed moot; what would he care, after the fact, if he was scooped from the floor of his apartment or power-washed off the sidewalk? 

Only this moment mattered. Only now, the time spent to be made to feel terrorized and helpless in his own apartment, and however long he could stand it.

What bothered him most was that he had to rewrite the line about his father. He got through it, then stopped. He didn’t want to say goodbye.

The younger officer facing him started to laugh. Barba only realized after the fact that it was because he’d silently started to cry. 

Hot tears tracked down his cheeks, stinging as they rode over the welt on his face. The mark was high on his cheekbone, and with time a bruise would make itself known. If the officers took enough care covering it up, a gunshot there might not even kill him, but instead blow away bone and nasal cavity, his orbital socket. Maybe shatter the bridge of his nose. If he was lucky, the bullet would go through his right eye. 

_If I survive it,_ Barba thought, and tried to steel himself for the possibility. _I cannot scream._

“Finish it,” Donaldson ordered, and drew the lip of his gun across Barba’s neck. Barba found his tone not to be particularly sinister, but… annoyed. Barba had to choke back a sob; there was no grand scheme here--Barba had _annoyed_ these men and their friends, and with the means to do so, they had chosen to terrorize and kill him. Such, it seemed, was the appropriate response. 

Getting away with it was its own crime. But it was that these men had chosen single minded retribution for their goal, readily accessed the idea, and then enacted it with such prolonged and detailed work that made Barba sick to his stomach with dread. 

He’d never stood a chance. Had he ever really known that?

Benson would balk if she knew Barba was capable of such defeatist tendencies. She’d demand better. He imagined her inside his head, tried to find what it was in her that forced her own hand towards survival, even when she would have welcomed the cool touch of surrender. 

_“Finish it,”_ Donaldson said again.

Barba wet his lips, tasted salt. “I’m… verbose.” 

He knew stalling was his only hope. He’d plead and beg for his life when all other options were lost to him, but for now, he at least had this--his own words, the goodbye he’d want to give even if he was forced to do so. There was not a word on the page for himself, nothing that could be misconstrued as speaking to his state of mind. He was clear with his words, genuine in his apologies. 

To his mother, honesty: _I love you. I’m sorry I wasn’t a better son._

To his friends, a joke: _Hopefully we didn’t see each other enough that you’ll miss me for long._

To Benson, absolution: _It’s not your fault._

To Carisi, only what the man already knew: _I was cruel._

A hand came down and snatched the legal pag out from under him. Barba thought they must have seen it on his face. The tears had stopped, his breathing slowed. They realized right along with him that after his apologies, he had nothing else to say. 

For the first time in his life, he felt as if he hadn’t tried hard enough. 

“It’ll be just like going to sleep, Counselor,” Donaldson said, and Barba would sense the smile on his lips, twisting apart to show too-white teeth. 

Great gasps of breath loaded Barba’s lungs like the chambers fell perpetually empty. He searched desperately for his own voice, the only weapon in his arsenal. He’d begged for a lot of things in life, but never so explicitly as this. He made his case for scholarships and internship opportunities, sat tall during the countless interviews, always building himself up to the challenge but never escaping the fact that he’d still had to _ask._

He swallowed the lump in his throat. He couldn’t prepare any finely crafted arguments or timed smiles, the bread and butter of his work. There was only his life, laid out before him for as quickly as he could grab onto it. 

It struck him as painfully ironic, then--the months he’d had to practice this, the ease with which he put it out of his mind. He should have damned the detectives’ promises of safety and security. He should have prepared himself. 

Because he didn’t, his words would be novice. Barba was suddenly aware of the strong possibility that these two cops specifically had heard these pleas before, could sing them like a song. 

The lip of the gun moved slowly against the side of his head, searching for the sweet spot.

Terror had kept Barba from thinking this far, but it opened his mouth and gave him a voice all the same. 

“I’m begging you. _Please--_ ” 

Words failed him. It was chaos. 

A loud blast shook his physical self. The ensuing burst of smoke and heat that stung his eyes and coated the inside of his nose and mouth did something worse: for one terrible moment, it made him believe in Hell. 

He waited for the pain, but thought maybe with brain damage he wouldn’t feel it. But _with_ brain damage, would he think about thinking about feeling it? 

How did _that_ work?

It didn’t. 

Barba was gripped by the arm and given salvation.


	3. Chapter 3

He rubbed at his face again. His cheeks were dry, but the skin felt rubbery under the lick of salt and trickle of blood. Someone had pressed a bottle of water into his left hand, and for that reason only his right took command of the effort. He felt like he couldn’t wake up.

Shades of blue moved before his eyes--shoes, mostly, then legs and torsos when he lifted his gaze. He heard voices, some muffled as they spoke into cells, others shouting from inside his apartment. And just one so soft and so near him that he felt the breath on which words were spoken, if not for hearing them. 

“I’m sorry, what?” 

The apology crawled from the cracked interior of his throat, worn thin by talking, aggravated by the smoke. 

Barba looked distant. His gaze was narrow but lost as he focused on one speck of chipped paint in the hallway of his apartment building. Carisi, the warm voice at his side, repeated himself.

He explained that the moment Lieutenant Benson had all teams accounted for at the park, she realized Barba hadn’t gotten a ride from one of their own. They’d doubled down, brought in a tactical team, circled the apartment building, and readied themselves to strike. No moment--save for the last--was opportune. There'd been an ear at the door when Barba asked to write his own suicide note. When he’d started crying.

To that particular injustice, Barba spoke up: “And at that point you thought, oh, let’s give it a another minute.”

His tone was its usual dry, above-it-all nonchalance, and somehow he managed to finish with an easy little smile. Carisi made it for a farce immediately.

“We had eyes on you,” Carisi insisted, and fought the urge to turn Barba around and show him the tiny camera wired under his door. There was still so much going on--a live scene--and Carisi did not want to expose Barba to any more than he needed to know. His word, he thought, would be enough. “We were waiting, hoping he’d take the gun off you. If we startled him and he fired…”

Barba nodded with all the strength of seismic activity. His nerves were still frayed, his adrenaline high, and there was little he could do to consciously mitigate their effects. “Sure, of course. There goes my deposit.”

Carisi ducked his head to hide his smile; it was inappropriate. “Our main concern, yeah.” 

Barba groaned, then, and sank a little against the wall. “That smell is never coming out,” he lamented. 

“Nah, they got the windows open.”

“ _Great._ So it’ll smell like smoke _and_ garbage.” 

His hand moved to rest on his neck, fingers digging into the skin where the gun had been trained on him for--Barba didn’t know how long. He checked his watch again and was still surprised by the late hour. 

“Hey,” Carisi said, and at the urgent tone, Barba instinctively straightened. 

Handcuffed and wearing their _right to remain silent_ tight as pea coats, the officers--Barba's own tormentors and would-be assassins--were led by a cavalcade of detectives out of the apartment. Fin and Rollins were among them, and Barba did not doubt they'd claimed the honor of arresting these men for themselves. 

Barba slipped his hands loosely into the pockets of his trousers, squared his shoulders, and twisted his mouth up into a smirk. It was a move of automation, made more often in a courtroom than out in the world. He looked formidable, even if he felt like a cool breeze could take him down. 

As they passed, Donaldson and the other--Miller, Barba had heard through the wall--did not so much as look at him. It wasn't even a conscious effort, but instead a point of fact, as if seeing him was beneath them. Barba felt Carisi's eyes on him, at least. Dropped and sidelong, but the focus was intense and unwavering. 

Barba visibly deflated when Donaldson and Miller were ushered into the elevator. “That wasn’t nearly as satisfying as I’d hoped,” he said aloud. 

“You wanted to stay,” Carisi reminded him. He'd been against it; standing around, waiting as officers filed in and out of his apartment, filled evidence bags, photographed the scene. It was nerve-wracking even for Carisi, who didn't have to feel as though his life had been invaded, left in shambles, then rooted through. To subsequently watch the violators leave did little to settle the soul. Coming and going normalized their presence, and Carisi imagined Barba would see flashes of their faces--ghostly visages haunting the elevator and hallways--for months. It was no way to live, but Barba had chosen it. 

Carisi seemed to remember himself when he added, quietly, “Sorry. It’ll be better in court.”

“That’s usually my line.” 

Then, quite inexplicably, Barba leaned his head against Carisi’s shoulder. It was all too gentle and intimate a gesture for the hallway of his apartment building, surrounded by uniformed officers. Too much, even, for the bed they'd once shared. Carisi stilled.

“You okay there, Counselor? Are you feeling lightheaded? Shit, see, smoke inhalation is serious. I’m going to call and get that bus back--”

“Carisi,” Barba sighed, not a hint of the usual frustration that touched the name souring its speaking. “Just… be tall and be quiet.” 

It was such a relief to close his eyes. 

Carisi felt the soft weight like an anchor. What concerned him was feeling Barba's hair tickle the bare skin at his throat, the warmth now radiating over his shoulder and filling his breast. What Carisi thought was a dream, he knew was not that--yet still something further removed from reality than he'd like.

It was so strange a thing to know physicality in purgatory.

-

Benson joined them some time later--Barba did not know how long. Other forms passed and words were exchanged, but Benson scored his attention easier than most. The soft steps leading her assured gait were more a siren call than much else Barba had ever known. She had an air about her, a presence that suited her role as a commander. Barba would-- _had_ \--followed her places he'd come to regret. 

This felt like another. He did not want to open his eyes, meet hers, and hear the details of some impossible thing. The attack--was there any other word?--felt distant, gone in a literal cloud of smoke. Carisi had cause to be there, but tragedy followed Benson like a shadow. 

He imagined her looking sorry for him. When he opened his eyes, his visions proved true.

“Nice place.”

“Thank you,” Barba said, and all but closed his eyes again. “The vestiges of my supposed suicide are purely decorative.”

Benson gave him a supportive--if grim--nod, and coupled it with a gentle touch on his elbow.

“We need you to come down to the station. Take your statement. Are you up for that?”

“Of course,” Barba said, and found it in him to sound offended that she even had to ask. Then, as an afterthought: “But I’m riding with you.” 

“I’ll finish up here,” Carisi told Benson, though saying so was for Barba’s benefit. Barba pushed himself off the wall, jostling Carisi as he went. He fished his keys out of his pocket and handed them off without a second thought. 

The hallway and elevator were a blur; Barba only made his way through them with Benson’s hand on his arm, guiding him. 

_This is my life now,_ Barba thought listlessly. One cop or another could lead him up to his apartment towards certain death, or down to the street, in a grip that promised deliverance. 

Barba caught a glimpse of the doorman in the lobby, looking harried and confused with all the activity. He managed to raise his eyebrows comically, to give a little relief to _someone_ if having it for himself was impossible. 

There was no need to walk a few blocks to her car; Benson had parked square in the middle of the street. It should have made Barba smile, but the inclination was lost on him. He took the front passenger seat without a care. What were the odds this would happen twice in one night? 

She drove. Instead of the radio, the incessant buzzes, beeps, and hums from her phone were the soundtrack to an atmosphere of anxiety, uncertainty, and humiliation. 

“Barba…” Benson sighed, shook her head. “I am so sorry.”

Barba said nothing. 

“You know, there are so many resources available to you. I want you to maybe take a few days, then give my therapist a call. I’ll get you his card, okay? I'll tell him to expect your call.”

Again, Barba did not respond.

“Hey,” Benson started again, and dropped a hand on Barba’s knee when they arrived at a stoplight. “You’re uncharacteristically quiet.”

Barba expelled his first breath--he thought--in hours. It parted his lips warm, but disappeared into the stale cold of the car’s interior. 

“It’s a first,” he said slowly. “I don’t know what to say.” 

His expression changed, contorted into something like betrayal, where the anger had left his voice but holed up in his eyes. They shined with it. His mouth twitched once, twice without fully opening. Finally, when he spoke, Benson would wish she hadn’t pressed for a response.

 _“Thank you?”_ He tested the phrase on his tongue, found it unpalatable. _“Congratulations?_ Your plan was a roaring success.” The words were venom on his lips. Barba tasted the sting. “How much did you see? All of it?” 

“Enough to know it was… awful.” 

Suddenly, Barba was incensed. That wasn’t enough. He wanted the attack named. To suggest it was _awful_ was too gentle a condemnation. He wasn’t confused about what had happened, nor did he harbor any misplaced blame on himself for its occurrence. A _light touch_ was unnecessary. 

“When, though?” His lip curled as he spoke. “When they hit me? When they discussed the finer points of staging my suicide? When they gave me the ammunition they’d use to do it? When they put a photo of my mother _y mi abuela--_ ” 

To say that his voice broke was an understatement. It shattered. 

He laughed, an unfortunate sound pierced by distress. “God. Stop me when I get to something good.”

Benson spared him that much, clarifying the moment of her and the tactical team’s arrival: “When Donaldson went off about Terrence Reynolds.”

“Oh,” Barba said nastily, “A high point.” 

He shook his head dismissively. Benson, being who she was, so full of righteousness and ready with a sword she was always willing to fall on, likely saw the moment as Barba’s greatest strength. He did not shrink from the name and his part in serving justice. Even faced with his own execution, he had not been cowed into stepping back from what he believed, not once.

Barba wanted to tell her, _I couldn’t think to do something so smart._

Benson proved him right, dropping her voice into its most gentle tones, so much so that Barba wanted to turn in his seat and check for the presence of her young son. 

“You were so brave--”

“I was _not_ brave,” Barba countered, fast as a flash of lightening and doubly as fearsome. His snarl deepened as he said, “I was terrified. Thank you for the _demonstration._ ”

There was nothing to say to that, and Benson did not scramble on her hands and knees for words that would never be enough. Instead, she moved her right hand to find Barba’s left, curling her fingers into his palm until he opened up, accepted her.

She intertwined their fingers, and they did not come apart until arriving at the precinct. Benson parked the car and they both pretended she didn’t notice Barba suck in a wet breath and wipe at his face before stepping out of the sedan. 

-

His coat was gone, suit jacket too--he’d wrenched them off in one single effort, shed them like a skin and left them in a crinkled mound on the couch. He sat, tipped forward in just his charcoal slacks, a checkered pink shirt, maroon tie and navy suspenders. In such a state of undress, Carisi better knew the Counselor as comfortable, at ease. 

He wasn’t that.

“Hey,” Carisi said, a soft introduction. He’d hurried things along at the scene, then swung by a few all-hours digs for dinner options. He had everything from soup to chow mein to individually-wrapped muffins. “Thought you might be hungry. We didn’t get to eat.” 

They had relative privacy in Benson’s office, blinds tugged just enough so that Benson could keep an eye on Barba, but little else. Barba could smell the various dishes brought together in the two brown paper bags, but didn’t tear into either like Carisi had hoped he might. 

He looked so tired.

“No scotch?” Barba asked, though it wasn’t really a question. 

Carisi answered him anyway. “Not just now, no.”

“Did you get--?” Barba squared his index fingers and thumbs.

“--Little pretzels? Yeah.” 

“Are they--?”

“--Sourdough, yeah,” Carisi said, and went right for them, digging them out of the first sack’s top left corner. He tossed Barba a mini bag.

“Thanks.” His response was hushed, like he couldn’t wholly commit himself to speaking. He fiddled with the bag but did not open it. His face was drawn in focus, but his movements were slow, almost sleepy. It was a sight Carisi had seen several times a week, slipping into Barba's life with all the stealth of a cat burglar. To see Barba this way--even without the early morning hour as a backdrop--made Carisi naturally tender towards him. 

If he moved an inch to the right or turned his head just so--and squinted--he could see what it was they'd had. Maybe from a distance, it would make more sense. 

Carisi considered joining Barba on the couch, but thought better of it. He’d taken the middle cushion, and Carisi did not particularly want to see Barba move to avoid him. He took a chair facing the desk and swung it around, then took a seat. 

“You make your statement yet?”

Barba nodded before answering. “To Rollins.”

Carisi frowned. “Not Benson? On the ride over?”

Barba gave him a flattened look, the kind he favored when he was blindsided in court and was none too impressed with himself for his own shortcomings. “No. We really had so much else to catch up on. Must have slipped my mind.”

Ducking his head slightly, Carisi wondered if this was his place anymore, or if it ever had been. He wanted to ask personal, private questions of Barba. What little of that he’d ever done had been in bed with the man, soft between the sheets, whispered towards the ceiling at dawn. Sometimes Barba answered him, sometimes not. But at least there, Carisi felt permitted to ask. 

Knowing he’d come up short anyway, Carisi gave it a shot: “Do you, uh. Do you want to talk about it?”

“I want to eat,” Barba said, but was still toying with the sealed plastic bag. “Anyway. What more do you need to know? I thought you were watching.”

If he’d been able to put any force at the backs of his words, maybe they’d sound hurtful. To Carisi’s ears, Barba was spent, reduced to the meager tactic of deflecting. 

“I was,” Carisi answered honestly. “It was hard. I didn't really take anything in except, you know. Watching that gun. Waiting for it to move just an inch away from your brain stem.”

“Oh, same.”

“What's it been like here?” Carisi nodded towards the window, where figures kept jogging past, groups splintering from groups, men discussing the merits of an arrest made _of_ officers, _by_ officers.

“A lot of _hurry up and wait,_ ” Barba said, knowing the protocol well but still uneasy for it. This much, he usually wasn’t present for. He snapped open the bag--finally--and brought a pretzel to his lips. “They’re gathering troops.”

“No Trojan horses though, right?”

“I’d wager that’s what they think I am.”

Carisi opened a can of ginger ale and passed it to Barba as if he knew--inherently--that this entire ordeal made the man sick to his stomach.

“We can eat and talk,” Carisi said, pushing a little harder for Barba’s attention. 

Barba took a sip of soda, then answered with a smack of his lips: “I don’t think we’d cleared the block before Liv gave me the number of her shrink. Has she met me? I have my own therapist.”

Crude or not, it was a start. 

“I didn't know you were seeing a shrink.”

“I've missed a few appointments,” Barba allowed. “Over the… decades.” He shook his head, dismissed the thought. He did not want to open up the conversation towards the truth: that he’d once had all the emotional strength of a pincushion and left therapy for the sole injustice of being told truths he didn’t want to hear. He wasn’t proud of it.

Thoughtlessly, he returned to the scene in his apartment, his expression falling away as the memory came back to consume him. It was so easy to sink a step back into his mind and suddenly be terrorized again. He didn’t even have to try; it was there, ready and waiting.

“It was the weirdest thing. Like stage fright. I haven't felt that in… ever.” He’d always run his mouth, only learning later in life to do it with distinction. He'd so trained himself that he did not part his lips without some part of his brain lighting up, exciting in the fact that this young Cuban man from the Bronx could wield power. 

He wet his lips, continued, “I couldn't think of one good reason to spare my life. Not even a lie.”

He thought about what he’d written in his note, and though his hand was forced, the apologies were genuine. He wasn’t a good son. He was a burden on his friends and a callous lover. And though he was embarrassed, now, having written those things, they were no less true. 

Barba forced an embittered smile. “Undoubtedly, I'll have plenty to talk about. That's fodder for the next six months, at least.”

“Are you kidding me?” Carisi nearly came off his seat leaning forward, making certain Barba heard his praise. “You did _great._ You stalled for time. That’s what we needed.” When Barba met them, Carisi’s eyes were wide and clear, like he was gorging himself on Barba’s presence. There wasn’t a shred of him Carisi didn’t zero in on, as if he’d been searching for _that_ freckle or _that_ wrinkle all along. “Thank you. Okay? Thank you for doing that.”

It was what Benson had said, in a nutshell. Barba bristled, thinking they’d all rehearsed this.

And while the thought was absurd, it did not warrant the sudden, nervous, and _prolonged_ bout of laughter that beat erratically through Barba’s chest and spilled from lips.

Trying to explain, he faltered. “I don’t know why--my heart--is still--” 

Carisi, although ready with a learned explanation concerning _emotional stress_ and _subconscious response,_ did not get the opportunity to speak. Their peace was interrupted by shouting outside the office. The offending officers’ station chief and--surprisingly--Fin were going at it until Benson broke them apart.

Barba had stopped laughing.

“I want to be out there,” he said. “Fight my own battles.”

Carisi stared at the patterned carpet under his feet. It was as good a place as any to look, given that he couldn’t say the following to Barba’s face: “You should call somebody.”

“A lawyer,” Barba said flatly. There wasn’t much else to decipher from Carisi’s tone of voice. “You’re telling _me_ I need a lawyer.”

Carisi sighed, ran a hand distractedly through his hair. He knew the hard look Barba was leveling at him, but could not lift his gaze to meet it. “I’m saying… you’re going against two cops, now, and the whole union behind them. You know they’re going to double down on this vendetta, claim it went both ways.” Carisi held up his hands in surrender; he wouldn't make another point so long as he knew he was heard. “Just. Have all your bases covered.”

“I think I can handle my own affairs.”

“I disagree. Uh, respectfully.”

“Nice bedside manner, Dr. Kevorkian.” 

Barba all but threw the snack-sized bag of pretzels on the tabletop. A petulant move, certainly, but he wasn’t hungry anymore.

He touched his side in search of his phone, but should have known better. It wasn’t on him. Barba couldn’t even remember if he’d seen it leave Officer Donaldson’s vehicle. He spared a moment of concern for the device--as near and dear to him as a limb--but figured it was probably in an evidence bag, buzzing and blinking with the rest of his life going on. Cases and parties and gossip straight out of the DA’s office--Barba found he missed it tremendously, and wanted nothing more than to return to that life. 

And for his first step, well--Carisi wasn’t wrong. 

Barba went to Benson’s office phone and, knowing the number, placed the call.

“Ah, no. Rita, it’s Barba.”

Carisi was impressed by the choice. Rita Calhoun, the defense attorney who frequently went toe-to-toe with Barba in the courtroom had--once upon a time--played for the same side. It was part of what made her such a skilled opponent: she knew their moves like a dance, and stepped on their feet like she was calling in a tactical strike.

“Listen,” Barba started, then fell into a silence that neither lawyer filled. He moved to pinch the bridge of his nose but drew his hand back, smarted by an unexpected jolt of pain. Annoyance and ache flooded his being and he sagged under the weight of the oncoming storm. 

“For formality’s sake, I may not be at my best right now,” he said, then faltered, because suddenly any clear explanation for his ordeal had abandoned him. The fragility of his voice, Carisi thought, said more than enough. “I’d appreciate it if you were in my corner. And more importantly, I'll owe you one.”

Calhoun asked a few questions Carisi couldn't hear, and to which Barba answered either _yes, no,_ or _oh my God, no._

When he ended the call he gave Carisi a sharp look. “ _That_ was the thrill of a lifetime. Are you happy now?”

When an overly-loud _“No”_ burst forth, Carisi knew he had to explain himself, but dreaded the effort. He stared uselessly at his hands, fingers knotting together because he couldn't take Barba's hand, like he wanted, like he thought Barba needed. 

“Of course I’m not happy,” he muttered, and hated that he sounded so miserable. He was useless to Barba like this. “I just. I should have taken you home. Why didn't I take you home?”

Barba smiled, too-sweet, then opened a hand and gestured towards the quiet of Benson’s office and the ruckus that carried on beyond its walls. “I thought we wanted this.”

Carisi hung his head, shook it slightly. A quiet, voiceless _no._

“Then, honestly, I don’t know what you were expecting.” 

“That’s not fair,” Carisi said solemnly, gentle and patient where Barba was being brash and vindictive. 

“Isn’t it?” Barba pressed, his face taking on a little more color. “In the park? You sat me down for it. Put your arm around me like _I_ was going to do something stupid.”

“We had to wait. We needed backup.”

“And I rode away with it, like an idiot!” Again, Barba felt himself falling apart. His voice cracked, a precursor. “And you all _watched!”_

Carisi stood to meet Barba’s accusations face-to-face. There was no denying the left-turn down a sloping cliff side the night had taken, or the colossal fuck-up that Carisi had seen from start to finish. Where in any other case he might have known vindication--however narrowly acquired--now he only felt gravely at fault. Barba’s shrewd tone was counterintuitive; there was no need for him to struggle for the last word. He was right with the first. 

But Barba didn't have all the facts. He hadn't seen the look on Benson's face when she realized what had happened between the failed sting and Barba's departure from the scene. The loss of all reason, twisted into terror. The determination that laid waste to fear. It was a thing no less profound than anything Carisi had ever witnessed. 

In that moment, he knew they would succeed. In that moment, Benson was a force of nature. Failure and death would not cross her.

“You can lash out and take that tone with me, alright? Please do. But don’t put this on the Lieutenant. Don’t you dare.”

Judging by the unsettled look on Barba's face, one that rolled through his brow and set his jaw like cement, Carisi thought Barba might have known what he'd done. 

He said, “Too late.”

“Yeah, well,” Carisi started, but already felt his anger waning as he took in the pinched expression on Barba’s face, the one that reeked of wrongdoing. He sighed, said, “You know she forgives you already.”

It earned him half a smile, something drawn out of habit. “I know,” he said, sounding as miserable as he looked. “Isn’t it delightful?”

“Not in my experience, no. Being hurt by people you care about isn’t fun.” Carisi looked down, away, embarrassed for speaking in a roundabout how for how he felt about Barba, what they'd had, and altogether how it ended. Pink rose to his cheeks and then subsided like floodwaters. 

“Carisi--”

“No,” Carisi said, interrupting any imagined apology, comeback, or acquiescence to his point. His voice was immeasurably soft when he said, “Forget it. It’s a bad time.”

Barba saw it for the allowance it was. He blinked heavily, suddenly very tired and deeply in want of his own bed. “You’re sweet.” 

They returned to their respective seats. Barba tried to get a good look out of the drawn blinds, to see who was amassing forces, either for or against him. 

“You should fix your hair,” Carisi said, snapping Barba's attention away from the rabble. 

“You should talk,” Barba rattled off, simply out of habit. He moved a hand to touch it, but his fingers grazed his cheek along the way. He flinched and pulled back, and was shocked to find fresh blood smeared over his fingertips. “There’s still blood on my face.”

“Yeah, but the hair…”

“Yeah, _but my face._ ” All the anxiety and fear that had rolled back in favor of tiredness and ache suddenly rushed back in, grabbed and consumed him. He felt lost to infinite darkness again, and sought out Carisi as the sole beacon of light. “Can--may I wash my face? Or is this the look I’ll be going for from now until--” He found a piece of himself amidst the madness roiling inside of him, held it. “There will be a trial. I won’t get to prosecute it.” 

Then, he stumbled upon the greatest injustice of the evening: “I’ll have to just _sit there._ ”

It would have been funny, Carisi thought, if Barba didn't seem so far removed from the thought. 

He shook his head-- _no no no I will not just sit there_ \--and made for the door, snagging his suit jacket on the way. Carisi was quick to follow him, getting a few steps ahead and leading him to the bathrooms.

Barba asked, absently, “What’s going on with my hair?”

“It’s just… bad,” Carisi said as they arrived at the mirrors. Barba sighed. 

“So it is.”

Rather than its usual tidy style separated by a razor-straight part, his hair was mussed and wet with sweat, drawn at odd angles like Barba had cradled his head in his hands, and sat that way for an eternity. He couldn't remember doing it even once, even for five seconds, and spared a moment to think of all the things he'd said and done in the fog that was the last few hours. If half were themselves only _half_ as bad as they seemed, he had much to feel regretful for. 

Barba did not rush to turn on the faucets or hoard paper towels. He looked at himself, curious as to what an ordeal such as his ought to look like. What was the image of terror slowly draining from a man’s body, but nothing coming to fill its place? Barba had envisioned himself smaller, pale. He could see a little of both.

He prodded gently at the side of his face where the red welt was beginning to rise substantially and darken with earnest. The flesh was tender and broken, pulpy with blood. It reminded Barba of the skinned knees of his childhood, and how those fell away from a person at a certain point. Nothing came at a rambunctious child faster than the ground. Or a fist, to a fast-talker.

Or a gun, Barba thought. It was like a graduation. 

His face was further marred with dried blood and residue from the smoke bomb. Discoloration crept towards the bridge of his nose, and Barba knew to expect the fell swoop of a blackened eye by morning. 

_Morning._ He could scarcely imagine it. Night seemed to drag forever. 

It was strange, now, to stare at himself and know he’d taken stock of what he could lose, if not his life. 

Carisi was behind him, biting his tongue, not wanting to lie and say _It’s not so bad._

He said instead, “Did the EMTs take pictures of your face?”

“I think so,” Barba said, but supposed the flash of light he remembered could just as well have been someone examining his pupils and checking for a concussion. His lack of a definite answer surprised him, embarrassed him. 

Carisi looked away, caught a glimpse of Barba in the bathroom mirror. “Let me take a couple, just in case.”

Barba didn’t object. He knew as well as Carisi the importance of documenting a crime. 

He didn’t have to like it, however, or make it easy on Carisi. 

“How do you want me?” Barba asked, and tried for a smirk but came up empty. His mouth only twisted in ambivalence to his efforts to belittle the ordeal. Neither said another word while Carisi awkwardly leveled his cell phone and snapped a few pictures, front and side views of the wounds sustained only hours ago. The brazen red marks along his cheek and brow stood in stark contrast to the dull white of the tiled bathroom walls. Then there was the pink of Barba's shirt, the green of his eyes, the grey of his suit jacket. Carisi frowned at the vision; it seemed unnatural. The blood and bruising made for a few colors too many.

Barba watched the lines around Carisi’s mouth deepen in anger. He swallowed back his embarrassment, asked dryly, “How about a funny one?”

Carisi’s tightly-held expression fell apart into open distress. “Jesus. Can you stop?”

Barba turned primly, faced the mirrors again but resolved not to see himself again until he was somewhat presentable. 

He drew on the faucets and dunked his hands, but stopped short of anything else. 

He stumbled through the idea that suddenly found him, the realization that there was evidence yet to be collected. “I--he spit in my face. I don’t think anyone swabbed my face.” He closed his eyes, supposed it was too late for that. “But then I was sweating. And _crying,_ as you so kindly pointed out. I don’t--”

His voice reached frantic heights, and Carisi was suddenly flush with his side, a hand gently trained on his back. 

“Hey, hey, it’s alright. It’s fine. We got video, okay?” The hand moved in slow circles, and Barba couldn't help but think this wasn't the treatment Carisi would normally afford just any victim. The food, privacy, opportunity to make himself presentable, and now this familiar touch was specially tailored for Barba. 

“Wash your face,” Carisi said. An allowance, an order--neither was particularly becoming. 

Cool water pooling in his hands, Barba decided he didn’t care either way. Not doing so immediately was his own form of righteous protest. He stared at the distorted vision of his hands under water, the cold numbing each digit. 

If he just _fell,_ if his legs gave out and he dropped, Barba imagined his front teeth would break against the faucet, maybe go through his lip. The bones in his nose would shatter, or else glide up into his brain and let it leak out, a serviceable spile.

He blinked, jarred by his own thoughts. Admittedly, he didn’t have to wonder why it was suddenly so easy to see himself coming apart. 

He washed his hands and his face, then made an effort with his hair. He straightened his suit jacket, deftly buttoning it without a thought. The picture he presented still looked incomplete. 

Worse, there was nothing to be done for the emptied expression on his face. Barba had never been a stranger to performing on fumes; he could fuel himself on indignation and go for days. The things he felt now, Barba could not easily access. Things like terror and dread and a profound sense of humiliation were feelings he’d combatted all his life, but learned to bury, if not dismantle. Finding them again--who would ever bother? Who would trace those steps backwards into hell?

The thought found him again: _therapy._

When they left the bathroom, the precinct had been cleared of nonessential personnel. Those present had gone into the conference room. Rita Calhoun had arrived, and was stood with her back to the windows, addressing those gathered, as well as listening to--then promptly dismissing--whatever they had to say. Barba knew the kid gloves were off, and he wouldn’t be returning to Benson’s office for so much as a juice box. 

“You ready?” Carisi asked, taking in the sight and making the same conclusion. 

Barba straightened his tie and led the way. 

He swung open the door with a flourish and did not lose a step to his mounting anxiety. “Starting without me?”

Calhoun turned and saw her client for the first time. Her hand immediately shot out to prod at the right side of his face where the red welt was darkening into a fantastic bruise. She very nearly held it like she might when inspecting an injury on a child’s face, with scrutiny leading concern. _How did this happen?_

“Barba. You look like shit.” 

“My legal counsel, everyone,” Barba said, and coolly sidestepped her touch. 

Over his head, Calhoun shot Carisi a look, piecing the matter together. She nodded her thanks, and Carisi nodded his.

Where Barba very nearly faltered was not realizing his assailants would be present in the adjoining interrogation room. They were each visible where they sat, side-by-side, their hands free, at the small steel table. The air seemed to drop to the floor, puddle at his feet and become useless. Only some quick footwork saved Barba from walking clear towards the two-way window and staring intently. He stopped, turned on his heel, and faced those that could see him. 

The conference room did not lack for imposing faces; Calhoun’s was only one of many. Representatives from IAB, no fewer than a team of six from the NYPD police union--aged lawyers, their careers made in these ranks--someone from the DA’s office, someone from the _Mayor’s_ office, and the SVU detectives who had made the arrests were all present. It didn’t take much for Carisi to drift away among them and become lost in the crowd. Calhoun stood her ground, standing square alongside Barba as they steeled themselves to hear the first of many attempts to discredit his claims and muddy the waters.

The first stone was hurled by the officers’ union rep, Donovan Marten. Smarmy and assured, he quipped, “A lawyer, Counselor? I’m seeing double.”

Barba quirked an empty smile. “Just the one to your half-dozen. Would you like to call up a few more, even the odds?”

Benson stepped in, then, to course correct the meeting with a healthy dose of protocol. The conversation took its natural turn towards the case at hand, the charges to be brought against NYPD officers Donaldson and Miller, and the story Barba had to tell about their wrongdoing. 

The IAB reps were conspicuously quiet. Barba wondered if Tucker, while retired from their ranks, still had some pull. He didn’t have to guess twice where that string was wound, and who held the end. He did not look to Benson, however; Barba had not yet forgiven himself for the way he’d spoken to her.

But she was where his thoughts were--clouded and twisted up so tight that he did not realize Marten was speaking to him. A jarring, too-friendly clap on the shoulder fixed all that.

“All due respect, Counselor, you seem fine to me.” 

Barba stared at the offending hand on his shoulder until it pulled back as if burned. 

His voice dripping with contempt, Barba said, “I appreciate that. Truly. Thank you.”

Marten gave the broad, toothy smile he was known for--the ivory gate to guard his words. Doublespeak and distraction were his go-to means of lessening charges or sweeping away accusations against his kind. Barba had seen him mystify women widowed by police misconduct, turn their pain and tragedy against them and whisper doubt like the plague, forcing them to weaken their resolve, abandon all hope, and watch as justice passed them by. 

Barba hadn’t lost something as precious as a loved one, only his peace of mind. 

But, he thought, maybe that was how he would win. 

There was no returning life to the lost, but a man could claw and fight for his mind, and maybe get a shred of it back. 

“...your illustrious career speaks for itself. This would be a terrible slight, to voice such wild accusations and bring these dedicated officers up on charges only to see your case laughed out of court. I’m looking out for you, here.” Marten was saying, then continued, “In fact, I would wager this whole thing seems like a big misunderstanding. A practical joke taken too far. You must be paranoid to think those young men meant any serious harm.”

Calhoun and Benson both mounted immediate defenses, erected them like battlements and hoisted them like spears, respectively.

Barba was quiet, contemplative. He seemed to be considering the notion genuinely. 

Then, he turned, stared inside the interrogation room. “Mr. Marten,” he said, his voice stronger, maybe, that it had been in months. His gaze was trained on Donaldson, who was picking at a hangnail and looking positively _bored._ “Could you kindly ask your officers to empty their pockets?” 

“Excuse me?”

“Humor me.” Barba glanced over his shoulder, daringly flirtatious. “Either they do it now or in lock-up. At least here, no-one’s sweaty hand will do it for them.”

Marten set his jaw with an audible _click,_ but nonetheless rapped on the glass with his knuckle, and relayed the message through the intercom. Objecting to the task would only invite scrutiny and, as it stood, Marten needed to show the utmost confidence in his clients.

Miller, looking contrite, complied first. Barba’s crumpled suicide notes-- _editions one and two_ \--spilled out.

Donaldson produced the true prize: Barba’s pocket square, the missing puzzle piece from his suit, absent from the jacket’s breast pocket and a handsome navy blue to match his suspenders.

Barba didn’t expect gasps and applause for his little reveal, but he got what he wanted: silence. Dumbfounded or knowing--however it came--Barba was glad for it. 

“Now, unless you want to argue in court that I gave him my favors, _that_ seems curious.” 

Marten shifted his feet. He wasn’t the only one. “Look, Counselor--”

“No,” Barba cut him off, and took the step Marten had drawn back from. “If your first instinct is to railroad me, wax poetic about paranoia and any potential _upset_ to my career, I’ll say this much in return. _Is that all you’ve got?_ ”

He looked to IAB--still silent--and the law team that seemed to know better than Marten what they were up against. 

“We’re done talking,” Barba finished, and glanced at Calhoun. She gave him a smirk and a nod, but might as well have crossed herself, sworn, _Thy will be done._

She’d accepted the job when she’d taken his call, but Barba had just laid down the terms. They were in it, now. He’d leave his case and his stance in it to Calhoun, certain she was up to the challenge. Such was the range of his performance--it was for her, too. He wasn’t shrinking from this fight. He welcomed it. 

When Barba left the room, he wasn’t alone for long. 

“Nice work, Counselor,” Carisi said, genuinely enthused with what he’d been a witness to. The thrill wasn’t lost on Barba himself, either. 

“I feel like I’m due my junior detective badge.”

“You gotta eat the cereal, first,” Carisi muttered, still sore about their weeks-old spat. He kept in step with Barba through the precinct, but had to ask: “Where are you going, anyway?”

“Making a dramatic exit, Carisi.” He tried for a smile, wasn't sure if he managed it. “Which means I’m going to wait down the hall while you retrieve my coat.”

“I always wondered how those were done,” Carisi said, eyes glittering. He sprinted off. He was not above a menial task or two, but welcomed this one. A glimpse of the old, wholly self-assured Barba was payment tenfold. 

-

There was talk neither Barba nor Carisi were privy to: a plain discussion of what they hoped to achieve stood up against the realities they faced. Benson initiated it, corralling Calhoun into her office before she set upon the police union’s legal team and feasted on their legal measures before there was an opportunity to raise them.

Benson didn’t so much as blink an eye at the spread of food laid out on the small coffee table in her office. It seemed like a thing Carisi would do: stuff a problem with a good meal. And the half-eaten bag of pretzels was all Barba.

Calhoun knew enough late nights in her own office, and didn’t even ask before rifling through one of the bags with one hand, and coming away with a purple plum.

“They're going to want a deal,” Benson said as she took a seat behind her desk. Sometimes it offered her a unique vantage point from which she could see a case playing out. In making these judgments, she felt like a cross between professorial and prophetic: pass or fail, live or die.

“For conspiracy, kidnapping, assault, and attempted murder?” Calhoun laughed at the thought. “There's no deal to be had.”

“They're cops,” Benson said, though no one needed the reminder. The relative quiet of the arrests and the silent surge of important faces echoed a station and importance not many who entered the SVU precinct were afforded. She shook her head slowly, continued, “There will be a deal. You should prepare him for that.”

“The look on his face? He already knows.” Even for all his posturing, Calhoun had seen it in the man’s eyes, heard it in his voice: he knew his was a winning case, but circumstances outside his control made that glimmer of success distant to the point of absence. Calhoun’s own expression hardened, suddenly, and her already sharp features became pointed as daggers. “No. They meant to kill him. As much as I've wanted to do the same, I’m not settling for less.”

“Good,” Benson said, and meant it. “I’m glad he called you.” 

“I’ll let you know in a couple months if I share that sentiment,” Calhoun said, rolling her eyes.

“I’ll bring everything to your office in the morning.”

“You can send it with a detective--”

“No,” Benson interrupted. It was a long day, but her night was far from over. She would do for Barba what she would do for any of her squad: everything she could. “This one’s on me.”

-

Carisi was dismayed. The moment they left the precinct in search of a hotel, Barba seemed to shrink. He grew quiet. Carisi would have forgotten he’d had company if he didn’t glance at Barba every other second, seeing for himself that the man was there, was whole. Even secured in his handsome suit and coat, Barba seemed to sway from marker to marker--composed and collapsing. it was one or the other, Barba did not rest anywhere else along the spectrum.

They were at the front desk amidst a grand hotel lobby, and Carisi remembered investigating a case in one of the suites. Admittedly, such was the means he’d come to know a lot of the City. He opened his mouth to share this particular insight--who not?--but Barba beat him to the punch.

“Let’s go to your place,” Barba said, low and sideways, as if he had his doubts about the cute blonde receptionist. She’d hardly blinked at the mess made of the side of his face, which was either a very _New York_ response, or she was on the take. Whose take, Barba didn't know. 

He wondered if he’d been struck harder than he’d realized. Something had come loose in his head if he thought evidence was superfluous, and the accusation was enough. 

He couldn’t help it; trust--or even simple camaraderie--on the basis of good faith was no longer an option. When he looked at Carisi, he did not have those same fears and doubts. 

“You don’t… want that,” Carisi said, his voice pitched low and firm. “It’s been a long day. You need some sleep.”

“I can’t sleep at your place?” Barba grew more daring, and said this much aloud. More than words, the sentiment was a taste of the destructive force of self-preservation going sour and spilling out.

Carisi waited until the receptionist had turned away before telling Barba in no uncertain terms, “Don’t ask me again, okay?”

The hotel room was dark and blissfully quiet. Stood in the center of the room, Barba finally coaxed his fingers into loosening the knot of his tie, flicking open the top two buttons of his shirt. After that, the floodgates opened. He shrugged out of his jacket, peeled away his patterned suspenders, and despite all that, looked to Carisi nothing like the man with whom he’d spent the last nine hours. Barba sat on the end of the bed, started to untie his shoes, but gave up. He rubbed his face again, his neck. 

In his dishevelment, there was weakness. And to his horror, Carisi very nearly asked, _What’s wrong with you?_

Carisi bolted from the doorway. He’d been holding the door, thinking he’d see Barba compose himself and be able to leave before he had to be explicitly told to do so.

“Alright, keep going,” he said, and smiled despite himself. “I got your shoes. You work on the rest.”

It took some coaxing, but Carisi worked Barba out of his shoes, slacks, and shirt. The procedure was exactly that--a formal effort, hands laid only on clothes, never meeting the skin. Carisi could have done the deed in half the time, if he’d made a few exceptions for himself. When warmth touched the back of his neck in the form of Barba’s hand, Carisi knew he wouldn’t have had to ask.

He slipped from the touch, and it hurt somewhere so deep in his gut that he could not access the wound and attempt to sooth it. How could something so insignificant as a few centimeters of open air could be so corrosive to the soul? 

Barba stood, stripped of everything save for his underwear, black boxer briefs that hugged his ass and rode his thighs. Without a word, Barba disappeared into the bathroom. 

Carisi watched him go and frowned at the view of his backside. Barba’s legs were pale.

Although he’d seen those legs and tangled his own between them a number of times, it struck him now how unfriendly the winter was to Barba. Cracked skin and a perpetually runny nose was no picnic for Carisi, either, but the cold months stole the warmth from Barba’s very form, plucked it right out from under the dusting of dark hair on the man’s chest, arms, and legs.

Carisi took care with the abandoned pieces of Barba’s suit, smoothing each and dressing them on sloping wooden hangers in the closet. His fingertips lingered on the wet stains under the arms of the pink dress shirt, as well as the matching dampness spread over its back. It was still more evidence of Barba’s ordeal, the terror that had been inspired in him, and how his body was made to perform. 

Carisi searched for blood on the collar, but found none. 

_Small miracles,_ he thought numbly.

Time escaped Carisi, passed fast ahead while leaving him to his silent meditations. Soon, Barba was standing in the bathroom doorway, a towel wrapped around his middle, looking better for having showered. His cheeks were red, still, but with warmth. There was a clear distinction. He stepped further into the room.

“You’re still here.”

Carisi turned abruptly from the closet, but managed to keep his gaze to the floor. This show of modesty, as if he’d never seen Barba in such a state of undress, much less brought the man there himself. 

“I’m leaving. I just--uh.” Carisi dug deep into his coat pocket to retrieve a small tube. “I forgot--I brought you Neosporin. I’m going to put it in the bathroom. By the sink?”

“Do you want to stay?”

Barba said the words deliberately, like he’d made a decision unrelated to the question itself. Carisi would have rather heard that than to be put on the spot and held accountable for a thing he’d rather not admit. 

But Barba did not let up, did not say another word so that the conversation might take a left turn and excuse Carisi’s silence, or else chalk it up to mere serendipity. 

Carisi stole a glance at Barba, then looked down. Was he that obvious? Of course he was. How sick was it that he wanted to sleep with Barba, especially now. They were alone, and if that wasn’t enough, this was the first time in weeks since he’d seen Barba’s naked body. 

He was strong, compact, lined with enough weight and muscle to constitute a figure, a _form_ that was decidedly male. Where Carisi’s body was more of a column, indistinguishable if stood among its peers, Barba’s was the institution. 

With his intellect and wry wit, the man was altogether a show. Who that might be drawn in by the spectacle would not stay for the meal? 

There were still places, Carisi realized, that he had not had the foresight to visit his mouth. An elbow, maybe. 

_Do you want to stay?_ Barba did not repeat himself, but the question encircled Carisi like an enemy offensive. 

Carisi could not, in good conscious, say no. But at Barba’s own pushing, he’d found the answer he needed to give. Though not genuine or heartfelt, Carisi knew it was right. 

“I just need to tell you that I thought about it and you were right. About how this looks. Bad, mainly.”

Barba wore a grim little smile and nothing else. “I always win my arguments.”

It was the last thing he wanted to hear: to be told he was right, when he felt alone and sorry and wronged by his own actions. He’d turned Carisi away, but more than that he’d silenced the man, then seemingly cut off his own hand for making the overture at all. 

The punishments for his own pride were downright medieval.

“You were right, and it was unfair that I wanted it anyway,” Carisi continued, and Barba was thrown into silence. Carisi wasn’t stepping back behind the line, claiming some simpler existence for his own sake. His denials were reasoned and hardwon, but still troubled. Despite their sense, they didn’t _feel right._

“I care that you care about that stuff,” he said, then shrugged, embarrassed for admitting something so simple. “I dunno. I guess you know what you’re talking about.”

 _You’re so mean,_ Barba thought helplessly, but was nonetheless cheered--or as much as he could be, given that his insides felt like ash and the blood and sweat he’d washed from his body had come off like baked-on clay. Given that even after the fact, he still didn’t feel like himself. 

Given that he didn’t know what that was, anymore.

But at least in that moment, he saw Carisi’s disengagement for precedent, not law. 

Something must have softened in him, because Carisi mirrored his mood and chanced a weak smile of encouragement. 

“Get some sleep, huh? Take the day.”

“I want updates.”

“You’ll get them,” Carisi promised. “You got a lot of friends on the force.” 

“I know,” Barba affirmed quietly, then pronounced: “You all just burst into my apartment with an incendiary device.”

“Hey. Anytime.” Carisi stopped at the door, turned. “You should ice that face.” 

“Here I thought you’d offer to kiss it, make it better.” 

In a moment of clarity that found him seconds too late, Barba would wish he hadn’t said that. He didn’t know what he was asking for. He thought it was forgiveness, but Carisi acted as though he already had that.

“Goodnight, Counselor.”

Carisi stepped out of the room and shut the door on Barba’s last utterance of the night: a quiet “Thank you.” It was uttered by a man who had, over the course of some months, become wholly devastated by fear.

Great mounds of it filled his heart and pressed at the backs of his eyes until his vision dulled and narrowed. That was fear’s greatest power: it simultaneously filled its subjects up and shrank the them down, forcing their lives into a constant state of flux, an exercise from which there was no reprieve. 

As he sat alone in a hotel room on the Upper East Side, having washed the blood from his face and watched a one-time lover depart, Barba was left with 60 HD television channels and his own ruminations on all-consuming fear. 

He thought that the threats against his life amounted for the least of it. 

-

He tasted salt and knew he had cried in his sleep, a thing he hadn't done since childhood. It was a sickening realization, and Barba sat on the side of the hotel room bed, bent over, feeling physically ill for it.

He took long, slow breaths, but the calming relief never came. His breathing began to deepen, to stretch far out ahead of him, unmatched, until there were no other words for it than this: he was dry heaving. Barba took in great gulps of air at a pace he could not naturally sustain. And despite every breath he drew in, he felt starved and took two more. 

His erratic breathing only served to hasten his lulling headache and a sudden twisting pain in his stomach. If ever he was able to focus on the cause of some issue, the pain leapt and affixed itself to a new target, instigating a new manic response. 

He grabbed at the bedsheets and--somehow--kept missing. His fingers felt numb and uncooperative, causing his fist to clench around empty air. Eventually Barba slid from the bed to the floor, and was glad enough to find something solid, but saw the distance between himself and the phone at his bedside grow that much greater.

Barba thought if he could reach the bathroom, he’d see his face swell up in the mirror, or else his skin would be any among the festive Fourth of July colors--red, white, blue. He could not tell if he was choking, suffocating, or simply ceding to what was owed to him. 

He’d nearly _died,_ and not for lack of trying on his assailants’ part. 

What sense was there in a life that was won by odds? 

It was at once too little and too much to comprehend. The possibilities were unreliable, the fix unfixed from all reason.

Amidst the jackhammering of his heart and lungs, both jockeying for first position in a race that went all of perpetuity, Barba arrived at a simple conclusion, informed by a single instance during his education at Harvard Law School. Another student--entirely bright, handsome, and a quick study--had suffered a loud, prolonged, and visually stunning panic attack. Someone else in the class very nearly stuck him with an EpiPen. He startled out of the event in tears. Humiliated, the young man dropped out of the program within the week. Barba had some vague recollection that he’d moved home to Indiana and still lived and worked there.

 _That’s this,_ Barba thought, relieved that he wasn’t suffering a heart attack. Then, with despair, _That’s me._

He’d survived an attempt on his life only to be reborn into an existence unlike the one he’d worked for. Here, the scales were tipped, his name was known, and he chanced notoriety not for his deeds, but for some absurd tragedy that befell him. 

He told himself things to sate his anxieties. _It’s fine. What matters is that I’m alive. It’s fine. I’m alive. Carisi. It’s fine. Carisi might still--_

Barba felt his face sting with shame. Again, he couldn’t so much as lie to himself.

He weathered the event alone.

And that was it. Just when his senses came down from their dizzying heights, the realization struck him like oncoming traffic: he was alone. No, _lonely._ A different animal entirely, and it hurt more than he'd ever known, ever _allowed_ himself to know. It had always seemed a needless and petty thing-- _trite_ \--to want for company, hunger for contact, ache for love. 

He'd loved wildly, once. Loved Yelina not only because she deserved it, but because the feeling was intoxicating. He drank her kisses like water from a desert well, and was never satisfied. 

But that wasn't exactly it, as she had told him. And because she was infinitely cleverer than he, Barba did not once doubt her. When he thought he'd been limitless, she saw him as caged. He remembered when they sat on the sinking twin bed in his dorm at Harvard and she told him as much, cited every touch levied in moderation, and he recoiled as if scandalized. A moderate? Me? With _you?_

She'd patted his cheek. He’d wanted to die. Asked her to do the honors, even, because how could he go on living knowing he'd disappointed her? 

She'd laughed, kissed each corner of his mouth, his closed eyelids, and told him he loved the law, and wasn't that beautiful? 

She made him sound like some kind of poet: a hopeless, nomadic romantic traveling from the Bronx to Manhattan to Cambridge, the spirit of the law in his heart, the letter on his lips. She saw his heart as vast, but built only to contain the written word. He lamented her assessment for an entire semester, tried to deny it with a few wild affairs--men, this time, because he was so deep in the closet that he saw the male form like a challenge. If he could love _that,_ he could love anything.

Predictably, those romances burned like kindling. 

Perhaps more obvious, he never well and truly escaped his feelings for Yelenia, or the romantic ineptitude that chased them like hungry hounds. 

A man only needed to be cut down once at his height to know better than to reach again. The other half-dozen times were only to prove a precedent. 

Barba then embraced the term _moderate_ as a practice. He loved physically, so his various partners did not recognize the half measure until every kiss and caress was noticeably hollow. It gave him time enough to break apart amicably, excusing the failure under the pretense of having given it a shot, _really tried._ Men and women were ushered in and out of his life--thrilled to start, bewildered with the fallout--before they realized they'd been played. 

Who would deny acceptance of a failure that was not of their making? Only those few good-hearted souls refused to believe Barba could come up short, himself. 

And boy, did they ever learn otherwise.

When his breathing finally regulated itself, Barba stood up from the floor. His knees felt stiff, and it was another instance of him being unable to decipher the amount of time clocked from his life and fed into terror. It could have been minutes or hours, though he supposed the distinction was meaningless when spent in a hotel room, alone, without a cellphone or so much as a clue. 

Nevermind leaving the hotel and returning to his apartment--he’d walk, if need be. How would he step one foot inside the place and not lose himself? How would he sit at that table without a bullet crossing his mind as surely as it was intended to penetrate his skull?

How would he start again?

They were questions for a problem he could not yet face, so Barba settled for the immediate. Each step taken towards the bathroom was made with care, and it was a slow and steady hand that washed his face and made himself somewhat presentable. He felt haggard and looked it.

He dressed in his wrinkled suit, and supposed he ought to forgive himself its stale smell, though he was not too gentle a soul to grant himself even that. 

In drawing on his overcoat, Barba heard the snap of unaccounted for movement, and momentarily felt his heart beat a heavy charge against his chest. He stood silent and statue-still for no fewer than five minutes.

The offending sound was nothing more than an extra packet of sourdough pretzels tucked into the pocket. It was not, as Barba had feared, retribution. 

Barba dropped his head into his open hand, nose fitting between split fingers, palm soft against his own mouth. His breath rattled warm and wet as he laughed. 

When he’d woken that morning, Barba had no further plans than to leave the hotel and return home, where he could at least attempt to start his day over. Now, he had a new task: he needed to find Carisi, needed to crush the bag of pretzels against his face until one or _both_ were _dust_ because here they'd gone and _given him a start._

He left his room and walked, not knowing entirely where. He took the stairwell--all five unexpected floors--down into the lobby, which was ornate with furniture, art, and fixtures, but absent of many patrons. Barba realized he didn’t know the hour. 

A family of four had just arrived, the parents still young, with an unhappy toddler sulking at their feet while another quietly dozed against his father’s shoulder. A mother and her wisp of a teenage daughter stood side-by-side with their attention to a map of the City. Both were obscured by a tall crystal vase filled with seasonal Liatris flowers, tall and spiney and bright. In a corner seating area, a handsome elderly couple were drinking coffee together, a newspaper spread between them. 

Across from them, Barba spied Carisi. 

He sat slumped in an armchair, half asleep, long legs splayed out, his face lost to the soft of his hand as he used it for a makeshift pillow, hair falling over his brow as yesterday’s gel surrendered its hold.

There was a black garment bag drawn over one knee, only recently acquired. Barba imagined a suit from his apartment rested inside, the colors and patterns carefully chosen--perhaps from memory or, if Carisi was truly daring, then inspiration had guided his hand. It was what Carisi believed Barba needed: the illusion of composure, if the reality still evaded him. And rather than chance waking him from much-needed reprieve, Carisi sat with his find, as if waiting out a cruel man’s mania was an acceptable part of his day. 

It was a thing so kind that Barba could not attribute it to manners, though Carisi’s upbringing afforded him many: a penchant for feeding the wary, a tendency towards testimonial love, and the nasty little habit of ceding his wants to another’s.

He seemed so rare a bird that Barba could not bring himself to startle him, for fear he might fly away. So Barba stood before him, and moved his own foot to gently nudge Carisi’s. When Carisi woke, he seemed to confuse Barba for a dream. His was a sweet, boyish smile first, long and well before it morphed into one of realization, unease, and concern. The warmth was still there, though, and for its radiance alone Barba chose to excuse the pretzel faux pas.

Carisi stood and the garment bag fell to the floor. Instinctively, he moved to reach it, but Barba did not let him get that far. He enveloped his arms around the younger man, his right over Carisi’s shoulder, his left around the waist. 

Barba had not thought this through. If Carisi peeled away from him, there would be no retreating from that particular ledge. His humiliation would be total and complete, and his complicity in it undeniable. 

To his utmost relief, Carisi did not hesitate in returning the gesture. His arms encircled Barba easily, moved slow and then settled. His hands smoothed flat over the broad expanse of Barba’s back, fingertips curling just along the man’s frayed edges, where the touch was felt through layers of coat, jacket, and shirt. Carisi held him tightly, as if he could see now what Barba was feeling: that his psyche and body were divorcing from one another. It made him feel feral, almost inhuman. 

A simple hug was not the remedy for all things, but maybe this. 

Barba’s unshaven face was rough on Carisi’s own. His skin was clammy from his earlier spell of distress, but warmed fast on contact. Well above good or necessary, the embrace felt overdue.

Had Barba wanted it hours earlier, outside his apartment and still shaking from his near-death experience? Or was it weeks ready, and waiting for him? Was it owed the first night Carisi visited his apartment to settle his nerves? If not then, certainly the following morning, when they'd spent a day blindly losing sight of one another’s boundaries, negotiating each touch with a smile, a gasp, a moan. 

There was none of that now, only breathing. Slow, steady, and twinned. 

Again, Carisi followed Barba’s lead and did not say a word. They simply held one another, neither knowing the exact purpose, but both embracing the worth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> True to form, I can’t edit myself for shit. So there will be four chapters instead of the intended three. I’ve also started planning another (short!) story to this series, because my dear friend and light of my life slashmyheartandhopetoporn gave me a fantastically fun prompt. Stay tuned!


	4. Chapter 4

Calhoun tapped a sterling silver pen against her notepad, stared at Barba where he sat across from her with his legs kicked up on the far corner of her desk, his preciously-matched-to-his-tie socks in plain view. His thumbs flitted over his phone, and his eyes moved between the screen and a file laid opened on the desk. Supposedly, they were prepping for his case. In actuality, Barba had brought along his own casework, as if they’d merely scheduled a playdate.

She took it to mean he was confident. 

Buttoned up tight in a thousand-dollar suit and tie, drinking a one-dollar cup of coffee, he certainly looked the part. He hadn’t received a threatening text or call in the weeks since his assailants were placed under house arrest pending trial, and the distance served him well. For whatever it was worth, he was back to looking immensely pleased with himself. 

But avoidance was common among victims. She didn’t breathe a letter into the word, but being human? Barba had surprised her in the past. She wouldn’t put it past him.

She tapped her pen again, gaining his attention. “Is there anyone you can bring to sit with you? Fill the seats?”

Barba lifted an eyebrow, returned his gaze resolutely to his phone. It slid as if tethered to a railing. “Very subtle.” 

“Barba, you know I sincerely couldn’t give a shit.” _About who you're fucking,_ she thought, but did not say. _Mooning over_ may have better been the case. There was a sweet-faced detective who always seemed to be at Barba's side, or else his name was waiting on Barba's lips. She never had to ask after him explicitly--there he was. Benson had made him lead on the case, and he took that to mean he was at Calhoun's beck and call for every scrap of evidence, every miniscule change in the timeline. Despite the topic of conversation on which he was summoned, Barba never seemed sorry to see him. 

But for all she knew, it was little more than a simple friendship, albeit bizarre in its pairing.

She continued, “I’m after sympathy points, here. You’ll need them.”

“My mother,” Barba said, figuring he could give Calhoun that much. She wouldn’t cry, but she could be counted on to take his hand, pat his cheek. Better still, she'd stare death into the faces of Officers Donaldson and Miller. “Benson, Carisi--”

“Let me stop you there,” Calhoun interrupted, and ignored the flat look Barba gave her as if to say, _I’m literally done._ “I’m only saying, you don’t want the battle of the shields, here. To back you with the whole Special Victims Unit? It'll look like an institutional vendetta.” 

Barba huffed, leaned back dangerously far in his chair and considered the point as if it was written on the ceiling. He had to admit she was right. Moreover, it was the thing _she'd_ argue, if Barba hadn't called her first. But the insinuation--largely made on his part, now--that he didn’t have anyone else in his corner still stung. 

“Sure, of course,” Barba said, but was thinking _As if I could keep them away._ They'd sooner don disguises than fail to show up and support Barba. “Why don’t you set up a casting call?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of Carmen, maybe a few colleagues or friends. Open the rest up to press.”

“You’re a sly one,” Barba said, smirking. “And here I thought you were too long out of the game.”

Calhoun sat back from her pile of paperwork, exceedingly pleased. That was as poor a lie as she could imagine, but damn if Barba didn't give it his best effort. “You never thought that.”

“Right again.”

Despite the hours they'd spent together preparing and securing the case in Barba's favor, Calhoun found there was still one matter they hadn't discussed. She'd taken it for granted, thinking Barba knew well enough what he was doing, and more so what he risked by doing it. 

It wasn't a thing she often had to ask her clients, who did not have a choice in the matter. She preferred it that way; why stack all her hard work atop the flimsy pedestal of humanity? 

She gave up the racket, asked simply, “Are you ready for this?”

 _That_ got his attention. 

His mouth opened into a barely-there grin, something either on the verge of splitting wide or collapsing. “Are you kidding me?”

“I’m not hearing a _yes._ ”

“Yes,” Barba said, and he wasn’t smiling anymore. Then, “Absolutely.”

Calhoun saw him for posturing, like he meant to win the case himself. She didn’t expect anything less, though the effect was unnerving. It was easy enough to distance herself from the events in any gruesome case--as primarily a defense attorney, she’d had more than enough practice. But there were moments where the reality weighed too heavy and she glimpsed the damage, and still was shocked. 

She knew the whole of it now, several times over: his early silence on the threats, their slow escalation. The measures taken to prevent the inevitable, the efforts of Barba’s friends to protect him when protocol failed. The trauma he’d sustained well before any blow to the head. The coerced act of violence made under prolonged vilification, drawn like a picture into being. 

Then, perhaps the worst of it: Barba’s own attempts to spare his life were themselves written into his surrender. 

She drew in a breath through her nose, gave a contemplative frown as she looked Barba over, judging his mettle. Returned to his former glory or just occupying the visage, he’d made great strides. Still, it was a lot to stand up for. And the defendants being who they were, it was a lot to stand up _against._

Her assessment was this: “I wish your face was still fucked up.”

Barba boasted a crooked smile, charming with just a hint of flirtation. “You want to smack me around?”

“Yes,” Calhoun echoed. _“Absolutely.”_ She raised her cup of coffee to Barba, toasting the idea. “But it can wait.”

They went through it all again. Calhoun pressed Barba to discuss his own case plainly, to answer for his own actions and fears, the stupid reasoning he had for leaving the park, his thought process when he asked to write a suicide note. The fact that, save for one detail, he wrote the thing genuinely. Every detail needed to be accessible, ready on his tongue, even if it starved his senses and ruined his pallet. 

The discussion took the air out of the room, made it stifling and quiet. 

Calhoun nodded when they’d finished, satisfied. 

“On to what really matters--what eyesore of a get-up are you planning to wear, and can I talk you out of it?” 

-

Between video footage, numerous witnesses, and the offending officers mouthing off in the back of a squadcar, it was as airtight a case as Barba could want for any he tried, much less his own. 

Inexplicably, this did not put him at ease. 

His was the last voice added to the melody, though undoubtedly the most essential. The words, Barba knew, were there. Imbued with truth and ready on his lips after weeks of practice. They would not fail him. But now he was sat in the wrong place--basically benched--and the whole courtroom seemed skewed, rocked on an angle. Barba became wary of his footing just as he had to be mindful of his mouth. Being sidelined from his own case did not bother him in the abstract; in actuality, he found that everything he so easily commanded in the courtroom--confidence, for one--felt just out of reach.

That is, until he took the stand.

Barba sat straight-backed, his gaze set somewhere beyond the jury, past Calhoun, past his mother, and towards the back of the room. He was dressed softly in blue and grey tones, a seemingly simple look if only because the shock of orange in his attire was deftly hidden in his suspenders and socks. 

He dismissed his nerves, and knew so long as he led with his voice, meaning would follow after.

He was asked first about his work as an Assistant District Attorney--to Calhoun’s simple, “What is it that you do, Mr. Barba?” he’d been unable to help himself, answering promptly, “I professionally squabble with you.”--and was then led through questioning to the case that sparked the prolonged threats against his life. 

He and Calhoun traded in details, with Calhoun setting the scene and Barba filling the parts. It was a dense amount of content to sift through, but done right, the jury would be rapt, drawn into the drama, and quick to sympathize with its teller.

It almost shocked Barba, coming to the end of his tale, realizing _there was_ an end. 

“...I then asked to at least be granted permission to write a suicide note to comply with their plans to stage mine.”

“What was your intention, asking for such a thing?”

“I wanted to stall for time. And, if nothing else, I wanted to leave my mother with some… _thing,_ some _message_ beyond what I was told would be done to me.” 

“A bullet through the side of your head,” Calhoun clarified. It was not her intention to spare either Barba or the jury of any gruesome detail. “That’s what these officers meant to do to you. They brought a gun, forged documentation to suggest you purchased the weapon yourself. They even had you handle the ammunition.” 

Barba felt something in his chest tighten. For a moment, every button on his shirt and vest burned like hot coals on his skin, the snug straps of his suspenders like razor wire. 

“Yes,” he said, then swallowed. They’d just covered precisely this, but Calhoun’s decision to revisit the matter for the jury’s benefit was improvised. The gun, Barba knew, was essential. It spoke to the officers’ intent when the video didn’t reach back far enough to cover their words. 

He encountered difficulties in seeing the thing for what it was: a weapon, certainly, and a tool in their case. But for Barba, he knew the heavy-handled revolver intimately. It was the weight held against his skull, drawn across his hairline like the caress of a lover, pressed to his cheek like a kiss. 

Barba waited only half a second for Calhoun to return to the original line of questioning and when she didn’t, he went there himself, continuing: “The officers ordered me to write the suicide note in English, scrapping two initial attempts where I tried to be explicit in describing what was happening. They accepted a third suicide note,” Barba, ever the prosecutor even on the stand, clarified, “ _Exhibit 32,_ wherein I attempted to convey the situation to… whomever discovered by body, presumably.”

Calhoun nodded sympathetically, and Barba found he had to work to keep the grim little smile off his face. He shouldn’t have been surprised; he knew better than to doubt her dedication to a cause. In this moment, that was Barba’s victimhood. 

Barba wasn’t so proud that he could not accept the term. He remembered--vividly--how he felt that night, and the morning after, and for some time to come. There was no better word to describe how being made to feel death not as an abstract concept, but fiercely imminent, irrevocably altered him as a person. It cut some new part of him from a different cloth, stitched it on to the rest, obliterating the fine lines he kept and celebrated.

He’d work the rest of his life to mend those edges. 

And while he could not always see an end to those feelings--he knew their origins. Terror did not come across a person by chance. It was inflicted, wielded like a blunt object and swung with abandon. Even if he could never have his peace of mind returned to him, there was something to be had in _this,_ naming the thing that changed him and, in doing so, seeing justice served on his behalf.

 _No,_ he thought to himself, and did not continue down that road. It was too littered with half-measures. What happened to him stopped mattering the moment it didn’t kill him. 

What mattered was that the crime was committed by criminals who wore the uniform of a protector. It was beyond wrong, beyond insidious. It would not, could not stand.

He straightened his shoulders and readied himself for Calhoun’s next line of questioning. And then _cross._ God, did he ever hope they tried to cross examine him. _A little blood on the canvas,_ as he liked to say, would be an understatement. He’d christen the entire courtroom a performance piece, a genuine Jackson Pollock. 

Calhoun’s heels clicked on the floor as she paced the length of the jury, asked, “What did you write?”

“Apologies, mostly. I genuinely believed I was going to die.”

“What did you write to suggest you were being made to do this against your will?” Calhoun clarified, and if Barba was mortified he’d misunderstood the question, he did not show it. 

He glanced at those in the jury, surveyed their faces. He could win or lose a handful with his answer.

“I wrote a line about seeing my father again,” he said plainly. “We did not have a pleasant relationship. Anyone who knows me would know that I would never want for that, even in death. My mother would understand. Lieutenant Benson would understand. It wasn’t a matter of raising suspicion--they’d simply know.”

An objection was called from the other side of the room, and Barba openly rolled his eyes at the suggestion he couldn’t know what was in the mind of his own mother, what he’d _written for her to know._

He suffered through it, then rephrased: “Under the circumstances, I could not have been any plainer. It was not my choice to die. The one thing I wanted _less_ than that would be to see my father again, in this life or the next. If the defense wants to put my mother’s mental capacity on trial, I would love to see that pratfall.”

Calhoun nodded as if this was new information. It was for the jury’s benefit, but in being on the other side of it, now, Barba realized how silly it looked.

“And what happened next?”

“Officer Donaldson made a crack about how getting shot in the head would be like falling asleep,” Barba said sharply, but then continued before he was shouted down with _hearsay._

“As Officer Donaldson held a gun to my head, at my own kitchen table, a smoke-bomb was thrown into my apartment by Lieutenant Benson. I later learned that she, as well as Detectives Carisi, Rollins, and Tutuola, and other uniformed officers, were standing by, waiting for an opportunity to safely intervene. They entered my apartment and subdued Officers Donaldson and Miller.”

“And you, Mr. Barba?”

His gaze drifted towards those in the gallery. In his corner were--as promised--his mother and a few colleagues. Carmen’s eyes were bright with tears, and Barba bet Calhoun just loved that. One better--some of the victims he had represented came to show their support. The family of Terrence Reynolds was among them.

Barba wouldn't have put it past Calhoun to call them up, but she'd told him otherwise, said they’d reached out to her upon learning of the case. She called him a softy, to boot.

In the back row, well behind the scads of journalists scribbling notes, were Benson and Carisi. They were a constant fixture in the courtroom, and even when Barba wasn’t sat so as to see them, he’d long felt their presence. 

Barba spoke next without thinking, a rare occurrence inside the courtroom or out. In that regard, there was an inherent softness to his words, like they hung among the clouds, neither damned to earth or raised to heaven. 

“I was just thankful to be alive.” 

-

With its altogether sinister plot, his trial was the stuff of local news and crime tabloids. The police brutality aspect--as well as the high-profile nature of the victim--quickly earned Barba a turn in the more established works. The _Times_ picked it up. There was even a write-up in which the reporter called Barba _stately_ in dress and composure, a thing Barba found so satisfying that he hoarded two copies.

He couldn't even find it in him to be concerned when the photos of his injuries leaked, and were splashed on the stacks near where he got his morning coffee from a courthouse-adjacent bodega. His bloodied face and deadened stare seemed unknown to him now, so he didn't look upon his own face and wonder how he had it worn it to look at others, at Carisi. For once, it was not his problem. 

The facts, the judge, the jury, the _world_ felt resolutely on his side. It wasn’t a feeling Barba often encountered, so he wanted to savor its glow. What he felt instead was the harsh light of self-doubt: the papers made him out to be a champion for a cause he'd merely stepped into. Even the less flattering description as a would-be martyr felt too high a title for what he'd done. 

His job, mostly. 

Barba ultimately was not cross examined by the defense, and nor did neither Officer Donaldson or Miller take the stand. There were the mandatory attempts to throw doubt on Barba’s exact claims, but the detectives had done their due diligence and connected the officers to the texts and even--after some heavy-handed interrogation tactics--to Felipe Heredio, a two-time arrestee, but never a repeat offender once he started doing some side work for Officer Donaldson. The man fancied himself an entrepreneur. 

On the last day of the trial, there was a weak play made based on something Barba had said after the Bryant Park sting came up short. The line about hoping to “have a massive heart attack and die” for the sake of irony was, itself, very nearly laughed out of court. Barba even stood and raised his own objection, an outcry made in absolute harmony his with actual legal representation. 

The judge, likewise perturbed, asked the defense if they intended to cop to assisted suicide charges, a feat illegal in the great state of New York.

There were plans to celebrate even before the verdict came in. 

-

For a small bar, it was a large gathering. In a bustle of excitement, laughter, and overcoats, the bodies streamed in. It was all glossy black tile backed against a striking blue-and-white striped wall. A place in design flux, stepping into the floor felt like testing the abyss. Only with enough company did the threat feel deferred, and Barba did not lack for that. 

The space quickly filled with big-names in politics and law, alike. Many of the same friends and colleagues who had distanced themselves from Barba when the threats against his life became common knowledge were suddenly there, glued to his side, clapping him on the back. 

Smiling emptily with his cheeks and eyes, Barba had the same flat line for each of them: “So good to see you. It’s been _ages._ ” 

Even the DA made an appearance, buying a round for Barba, Calhoun, and the SV Unit that had made his case. 

Few stayed very long; it would be uncouth to be seen seemingly celebrating the conviction of police officers, however corrupt their consciences and vile their souls. Nevermind the victory claimed by Barba himself--score one for botched murder attempts. 

Barba wasn’t sorry to see them go. 

Calhoun, who still saw her place among them, shook Barba’s hand before taking her leave. She told him haughtily, “You’re very welcome.” 

Barba shot back, “Are you joking? I practically gift-wrapped this case for you.” 

“Humanizing you,” Calhoun said while finishing her drink and reflecting on her win. “That was the real challenge.”

Barba had to smile at that. “Thank you, Counselor.”

“Oh, please. Save your sincerity for court.”

Ed Tucker made an appearance, ducking into the place and making a beeline for Benson. Barba, though still not particularly impressed with the man, played it cordial. They both did. Benson rolled her eyes at each man's forced attempts at civility: the stunted conversation littered with practiced smiles and timed thank-yous. 

When she'd gone to collect on her drink, Tucker said plainly: “You've got the union shitting its pants.”

“Is IAB creaming theirs?”

Tucker smirked. “I can see why she likes you.”

“It's still a little fuzzy on my end,” Barba said, because if he was so easily won over by a crass line or two, he'd have left with Calhoun and never looked back. 

“I hear IAB is still looking for other conspirators,” Tucker said, perhaps to simply keep Barba in the loop, or else to put him in his place as best he knew how: with information. 

“A blood council,” Barba remarked dryly. “For me? You shouldn't have.”

There seemed to be a revolving door of company, with people arriving by word of mouth or a piece of gossip. Barba made the rounds, dutifully shaking hands and accepting varying degrees of congratulations and sympathies. He felt as though he had to make up for lost time. When the pleasantries were all said and done, however, he kept his circle small. He surrounded himself the people he worked with on a daily basis, but over the past few months had blurred the line between colleagues and friends, and something else--a strange intersection that crossed the two facets with a third: champion. They buoyed his cause, often at great personal and professional cost.

His case may have been cut and dry, but a simpler fact seared through it like a hot poker into ice: police don’t turn on their own. It may as well have been a law itself, given how difficult it was for Calhoun to wrangle any officers from Donaldson’s and Miller’s division to speak to their activities. Even something as simple as acknowledged use of multiple phones had to be subpoenaed out of them. 

And though his office and their department were often at odds--the fact that Benson had _still_ not breathed a word into the Terrence Reynolds indictment that started this whole ordeal was not lost on Barba--things had slowly turned a corner. Bitterly, Barba knew a part of that was the loss of Sergeant Dodds. The detectives _were_ closing ranks, and Barba just happened to make the cut.

Barba knew what he had, here. 

Benson and Tucker were across from him, tucked in together much like Barba didn’t want to think of them. Fin and Rollins were to his left, easy, all loose smiles. On his right, his mother sat, and farthest away was Carisi, on the end, catty-corner to his mother. His long legs at the narrow table was no simple feat, so he sat at an angle. Though he was careful not to stare, Barba saw Carisi incline his head towards his mother’s, smiling dumbly as they carried on a conversation.

Fin and Rollins asked after details from court. They'd heeded Calhoun's order not to stack the deck, but as the thing gained acclaim for being the wildest legal showdown in some time, it was difficult to force oneself out of the circus tent. Normally Carisi was good for a detailed report--at this point, they could count on him to do the voices--but he seemed reticent to perform. 

Lucia Barba took charge, leading first with her astute assessment that _“That Calhoun is a ball buster. I adore her.”_ She hit low points and high, but breezed over the gruesome particulars as if they were immaterial. Such was a mother’s judgment. 

“Don't forget calling his own objection,” Benson piped up.

“You didn't!” Rollins cried as Fin simultaneously dismissed, “Of course you did.”

When looked for for an explanation of his apparent and _complete_ foresight on the matter, Fin merely said, “He's gangster.”

Barba raised his glass to Fin and could barely keep his lip buttoned over a grin as absurd as the compliment was due. He gave a stately turn of his head--a nod for those too proud for the movement, and a thing he’d observed to perpetuity in the Dean of Harvard Law School--and concurred, “It’s as I’ve always said.” 

“Ah!” Benson interrupted, a smile lighting her face as he fiddled with her cell phone. “We’ve got one more for the party.”

She answered the incoming call and put Nick Amaro on speakerphone.

His warm, rolling voice spilled in as easy as a memory. 

“Heard you beat a bad rap, Counselor!” he joked, and after being passed around the table Amaro handed in Barba’s hand. Their conversation leapt into rapid-fire Spanish with the trading of barbs and well-wishes. Amaro switched to English for the benefit of those gathered, another joke cutting into the sincerity--”Is this what it takes to get you all in one place, huh?”

Amaro fell back into Spanish with a request for Barba, who dutifully complied and took the phone off speaker. He caught the sweet smile Benson served him, waved it off as he sat back to take in whatever Amaro meant to say privately. That he didn’t excuse himself from the table was purposeful; he didn’t expect to be particularly moved. 

Amaro was best with words when he sharpened them into spears. He could make Barba twist and writhe as Amaro challenged him, forced some assumption of his undone. Barba never took it without giving just as good back, but he was in a generous mood. 

Mostly, he listened. Occasionally he interrupted with an unfinished, “Ai, no…” His face was drawn, but his cheeks pinked in a strange contrast. 

People pretended to go about their conversations and drinks, but every eye drifted back to Barba, studied him as the conversation wore on and he had less and less part in it. Whatever Amaro was saying to him, this much was clear: it was informed. Barba scanned the faces of those gathered--someone here was a mole, and he was paying for it with a load of heartfelt sincerity in his ear. 

Amaro said simple things like _That was fucked up_ and _Of course you’d come out ahead of it. I never had any doubt._ Then they snowballed into a complimentary set, and it took Barba a moment to discern that there was nothing spectacular here, just the fact that Amaro had nice things to say about him.

In return, Barba had some half-baked notion of a response-- _California’s really changed you. You got a Namaste for me, too?_ \--but he couldn’t bring himself to serve it.

He muttered, “Gracias. Verdaderamente. Aprecio que… Thank you, Nick.” 

Looking sheepish, he handed the phone back to Benson. 

“Nick, you broke him,” Benson said, her tone reaching for bright. She wasn’t wrong: Barba was demonstrably quieter after his conversation with Amaro, humbled--even stunned--by the notion that his life should matter to a man who was no longer even a tangential part of it. 

Barba’s mother took over, then, wading through the awkward silence to entertain the detectives with an impression of her son and the façade he put on for her concerning his case. 

“You know he told me none of this. None! His own mother! I heard about the threats, read about them, and he shrugged them off. _Mami,_ it’s fine. _Mami,_ it’s nothing. _Mami,_ don’t worry about me. I didn’t get so much as a courtesy call after--” she didn’t say it--couldn’t breath a word into the terrible things she’d heard in court--but pressed on, elbowing her son conspiratorially. “What was your excuse?”

“You were on your first vacation in twenty years,” Barba recited, and felt no less sure in his reasoning than he did a month ago.

“And I’ll say now what I said then--I’ve been a mother twice that long. You’d think I’d at least merit a phone call, huh? A text?”

“Mother,” Barba said, still smiling but only just.

“ _Mother,_ ” she repeated, rolling her eyes much in the way her son was prone to do. Barba may not have inherited her darker features, there, but the ability to speak with them was so ingrained that they may have created the language amongst themselves. “Ai, mi hijo, esto no es tu _Downton Abbey.”_

He leaned towards her, just a hair, and she curled a hand to pat his cheek. It was a move like music--just a few simple notes, but favored for its familiarity.

She gave a put-upon sigh and turned in her seat to gather her purse. “No matter how grown you are, I still feel like you can’t wait for me to take off so you can hang out with your friends.”

“Mami, no,” Barba denied, then asked, incredulous, “ _These_ people?” 

It earned him a laugh from the detectives, as well as a goodbye kiss on the cheek from his mother. Carisi--of course--stood to gather her belongings, even helped her into her coat. Barba knew he’d hear about it later-- _What a nice young man. I’m sure he’d call his mother if someone was trying to murder him._

And loathe though he was to admit it, Lucia Barba wasn’t wrong. Her departure signaled more drinks, laughter, and shittalking. A tsunami of each rode over the table in waves, and the festivities continued late into the afternoon. 

Rollins was the next to go, having to relieve Jesse’s babysitter. 

“You stay out of trouble, now,” she warned Barba, her southern accent honeying her words such that it made a tipsy Tucker laugh to hear it.

Fin opted to share a cab with her. He clapped Barba on the shoulder, said they should get lunch again soon, a line that earned its due laughs from the squad, though Barba’s twisting little smile was sincere when he answered, “I’d be thrilled.”

When Barba lost sight of Tucker’s left hand--meaning, it was creeping somewhere along Benson’s thigh--he knew she would not be long for his company. 

Ten minutes later, when Tucker had gone to piss away an afternoon of drinking, Benson smiled at Barba.

Just--smiled. Like she was finally content to see him as he was, now: fresh off a win, red-faced with scotch, tie askew, jacket lost to the back of his chair, loud suspenders drawn in a pink so striking it left any observer curious well past the wearer--they’d wonder, who would construct such things? What hath God wrought if not this absurd hue of pink? 

Loud in more ways than one. It was how she liked him best.

“You good here?” Benson asked, still smiling at Barba, though her gaze drifted to Carisi and back. 

She might as well have given them with her blessing.

“I’m stupendous,” Barba said, and raised his thrice-emptied glass of scotch. 

If it was at all possible, the look on Benson’s face brought out even _more_ red in Barba’s cheeks. Coupled with his suspenders, he looked every shade like a Valentine. 

“I bet,” she said, then turned her attention on Carisi, who had been an uncharacteristically quiet fixture since the trial began. He was smiling, now, and only beginning to shake out of his stupor. He had a beer in hand--his first--and held the glass poised to his lip. There was foam tracing the edges that mirrored the brush of snow against the windows of the bar. 

“You’re fine to see him out of here?”

Carisi tabled his drink and sank his hand into his lap as if she’d caught him with something he shouldn’t have. Sure, they were all technically on call, and that didn’t stop anyone from celebrating, but maybe there was an unspoken rule--when everyone goes out drinking, new guys don’t. 

“Sure thing, Lieutenant.”

“That was a question, not an order.”

“Um--still yes?”

Greeting the cold outside was a new feat. Barba could scarcely remember it on the walk over, let alone from the days, weeks, and months before. It was as though a part of his consciousness had returned to this very task--reading the natural world around him--after being condemned to work another station. 

There was a lag in production, of course: he realized he wasn't wearing a scarf and could not find his preferred pair of leather gloves usually tucked in his coat pockets. Maybe a day ago he would have forgiven himself this minor infraction, but since his case was won he could no longer stand to excuse himself. Where had his head been?

Curiously enough, the bitter snap of winter brought Barba his first taste of relief. This was the funeral march for a relative he'd hardly known long enough to despise fully, but here he managed, a real go-getter. Like the celebration was part of the case itself, Barba took the first steps out of his ordeal, then got out ahead of it when, for so long, it had joined him in lockstep. A bizarre thought had him convinced Carisi felt it too. He imagined the cold afternoon sweeping over them, a baptism by ice. 

He turned to look at Carisi for confirmation-- _Do you feel this? It’s good, isn’t it?_ \--but the man was still at the door to the bar, hastily buttoning his own coat with his over-long fingers. They were a set of peculiar spiders raised to do his bidding. Carisi, at least, had remembered gloves.

Again, the thought found him: _Where’s your head at?_

The city's internal machinations--foot and genuine traffic alike--denied the snow’s hold along the streets and sidewalks, offering a sense of surreal dislocation. The sky and parks were lost to winter, but the streets were summer bikini body ready. 

The dry wind swept the occasional sheet of snow up onto the sidewalk, but brushed it away again before it could melt under the feet of pedestrians. Barba took his usual long strides--always rushing, always someplace to be. Even the scotch that had warmed over in his belly didn’t slow his step.

Carisi caught up with him. “Where ya headed?”

“With my newfound freedom?” Barba asked wryly, because a detective on his tail was a strong counterargument to exactly that. 

He had a genuine inclination to suggest the Burberry boutique, if only because he _well and truly_ needed a scarf. It was a passing fancy, and Barba found no thought more present and desired than just the one: “Back to my office. Work to do.”

Carisi grinned wide, a little uncertain, a little thrilled. “You just drank, like, a pitcher’s worth of scotch.”

“You think I’m going to drunkenly indict people?” Barba asked, full of bluster as if he hadn’t done that a time or two. “I paced myself.”

Carisi bumped his elbow up against Barba’s. “Let me walk you.” 

Carisi wasn’t exaggerating-- _much_ \--after how much Barba had to drink, but the bitter cold did a lot to sober the man up. It filled him, excavating through a breath any vertigo that might have taken hold and dulled his senses. Barba didn’t feel off kilter until Carisi departed the easy silence they’d established, and threw Barba from its comforts, too. 

“I like your mom.”

Barba didn’t bat an eye; of course this would be Carisi’s first instinct--to ask forgiveness after he’d he’d done something without permission. Barba caught himself on that thought, reminded himself they weren’t so inextricably linked that Carisi needed to consult with him on anything, as a courtesy or otherwise. 

“I saw that you introduced yourself.”

“Was that stupid?”

“Brave,” Barba corrected, then tucked his chin towards his chest in an attempt to guard himself from the cold air. Too much was dizzying; it felt like a worse sin than the scotch. “She probably read you like a book, though. I’ll get a call from her later.”

Carisi looked alarmed, like he’d stepped into someone’s masterwork of a sandcastle without realizing it was anything other than a mound. “Oh, hey, I’m sorry--”

“She knows,” Barba said simply. Then, realizing it wasn’t so simple, he amended: “About me.”

But even then, the waters were still muddied. 

“I think it still bothers her,” he admitted, thoughtful and unsure. She’d wanted Yelina for him, and all that implied. Like the prestige of having come up from his old barrio and staying there--only a few achievements of the great Alex Muñoz--he’d lost her to him, too. Everything that came after--men, most noticeably--read to Lucia Barba as second best, like Barba was runner-up in his own life. 

_You can’t have anything with a man,_ she’d told him once. _Only a secret._

Still, he managed to smile. Despite his supposed failures, she loved him. He never doubted that. 

“Mothers. They like to think they can only see the best for you.”

“You’ve already got the corner office,” Carisi started, ticking off the items on his fingers. He made a wild guess as to the next two: “Marriage and kids?”

“So you’ve heard this one before.”

Carisi shrugged. “I like the idea.”

Barba wanted to laugh in his face. “And you think it’s feasible?”

“Sure. Why not?” Carisi fired off at once, then frowned, because how was feasibility the point when something was desired with one’s entire heart?

It must have showed on Carisi's face--his unrelenting belief that whatever a person wants genuinely is therefore a good and worthy thing, itself sustained by an indelible spirit touched by too much kindness--because Barba felt compelled to ask: “Where on earth did you come from? Is there a Mayberry Street here in New York I’m not familiar with?”

“If there was, it’d be on Staten Island,” Carisi said--offhanded at first, but then he snapped his fingers in excitement and declared a winner: “Holy shit there is. Mayberry Promenade!” 

“I stand corrected,” Barba said, and was smug even in defeat. 

“Anyway, she’s great. Your mom. She must be real proud of you, huh?”

“I’m not a very good son,” Barba said, his instincts taking over. He could not be complimented by degrees; there was nothing said about him he wanted to confirm. People said a lot of things. “This trial has been the first I’ve seen of her in a long time.”

“It’s understandable,” Carisi said, his tone pitched so light that Barba knew he thought otherwise, and was overcompensating. 

“Even then. I rarely called her. She’s right when she said I left her in the dark.” Barba frowned at his own answer. His belated apologies couldn’t cover it. He searched for--and found--an answer that punched up from honesty and broke through to embarrassment. “When you’re alone and scared, you don’t really want to invite an audience in and be seen that way.” 

Carisi wasn’t as touched by his admission as Barba had expected. His point was resolute: “It’s your mom, though.”

And Barba supposed that was fair.

“It’s as I said,” Barba hooked an accusatory finger back at himself. “Not a very good son.” 

Perhaps hearing something like contrition in Barba’s voice, Carisi granted him more leeway. “Sometimes that happens by accident.” 

“How about your mother?” Barba asked, leaving the question open to interpretation. Did she know about Carisi? Did she know about _him?_ Did she approve? Or did she pray for her son and cling to the same age-old denials? 

Carisi shrugged under the heft of his padded coat. “I’ve got it easy. I’m her only son in a gaggle of daughters. She loves me for my chromosomes alone.”

“She’s got a lot more than that to be proud of,” Barba said.

“You’re a nice drunk,” Carisi observed. “Who knew.”

“I’m not nice. The word you’re looking for is _calculating.”_

“And honest, too.”

The sky hung lank and grey overhead. Somewhere the sun was obscured by a vast stretch of cloud, and all the would-be reds and yellows of a bleeding sunset were relegated to ashy blue-greys. Snow streaked the streets, but genuine accumulation was saved for the tops and buildings and narrow alleyways. Barba liked that about winter in New York--it rarely stood in his way. 

“Hey, um.” Carisi lost a step to his uncertainties, and gained two more and returned to Barba’s side.

“I read your note,” Carisi said, because it needed saying. He knew that Fin and Rollins had pointedly _not_ read it. Fin in particular had balked at the thought. There was no need, and more stood against indulging in the macabre than not. And he had another point, made swiftly enough that Carisi knew there were examples to back it: Barba might want to pretend it never happened, so why throw roadblocks in his way? 

Rollins had agreed. Where was the value in knowing the man’s most intimate thoughts at such an inconceivable moment in his life--the minutes before he believed it would end? It was like seeing Barba expose himself, but instead of stripping bare he’d sooner skin himself alive. In the moment the matter arose, some empty night in the precinct where none felt the particular draw to leave, she’d dropped her voice, reminded Carisi they’d all seen the vacant look on his face as his life was spared, and he was slow to realize it. To then read the letter he’d just penned? Overkill. 

Barba seemed to be in agreement: “My _suicide note?_ Jesus. That’s one hell of a pickup line.” 

It was part of a process, now: laughing off what had been a genuinely terrifying and daunting task. There was nothing else to do about his new reality than to meet it, and because Barba needed the practice, he ended up rehashing every tested line, all at once. “Try coming back from that. If you _dare_ thank me for the mention--”

“No, I just--” Carisi faltered. He could hardly bring himself to contemplate what Barba was made to feel in that moment, but what he was made to _do_ haunted Carisi’s own conscience. It confounded the limits of sin and crime, and seemed to him like a whole new evil. How Barba had faced it at all still mystified him. 

It wasn’t a thing he could yet put words to ask after. 

And maybe he’d buried the lede, starting with it.

“Just what?”

“Why do you hate your dad so much?” Carisi blurted out, his curiosity running far ahead of any sense. 

The question genuinely surprised Barba, though he supposed answering it was a far simpler task than amassing a literary review of his forced suicide note. Small miracles.

“Well, the feeling was mutual,” Barba said. It never escaped him that people--even thoughtful detectives--lacked the capacity to see the relationship between parent and child outside of a view of their own. It was so essential to one’s own being that it touched everything, regardless of intended application. So Barba explained: “We fought a lot. Not with our words, in which case I would have laid his neanderthal ass out, as the kids say.”

“He hit you?” Carisi asked this much with such urgency one might think there was still something to be done of it. Barba purposefully waited a beat so that Carisi would recognize how useless his fervor was on its own.

“And my mother,” Barba said, because he’d always been the afterthought. “And the dog and the cat and the goldfish. But more than that he was--” Barba stopped. He didn't have the word for all the misery his father caused. The violence was its own monster, tremendous and quick, but there were others. Silent offenses that made the lives of those around him just that much smaller. Much like what ate away at his liver, he was a cancer. 

“My mother took me, _left him,_ but we couldn’t get out of the same neighborhood.” He still couldn’t bring himself to laugh at the irony, though he'd long tried. “They never divorced. He just… he was always there.” Barba snapped from his daze of half-answers and asked briskly, “What does it matter?” 

Carisi shrugged again, then moved to let a woman with a trailing grocery bag pass. He fell back behind Barba on the street, then chased to join him again.

“I don’t think I know much about you,” he said.

“You do,” Barba countered, thinking, _Especially now. How can you not know a man by his last thoughts?_ “You just grossly overshare everything and think people are holding back when they don't do the same.”

“Okay.”

Carisi was dejected and Barba was at fault. He sighed, said, “I grew up in the Bronx, went to Catholic school--”

“Me too! Catholic school.”

“No kidding,” Barba said dryly, and gave Carisi a bemused smile. As if his entire being did not scream _Catholic._ “But not the Bronx. No, I couldn’t confuse you for anything other than Staten Island.”

Carisi nodded but looked unhappy, like he knew he'd spent his turn and come up short. Barba reached a foot away from himself and pulled pity out of the mind of a passerby. It didn't fit inside him, didn't quite go with the rest of what he was, but he tried his hand at it.

“My father… He didn't like being a father,” Barba said. “There was no way for me to be a good son--the son he might have wanted--when there was nothing to shoot for.” Barba rolled his eyes at himself. It was absurd on its face, saying these things into plain air. They were better kept in the lines of a childhood diary or, _if absolutely necessary,_ uttered downward, so that they fed like a surreptitious fart into the posh furnishings of an overpriced therapist’s office. “I tried being a man, standing up for my mother and myself. He didn't like that, either.” 

Barba didn't offer up what followed _that_ failed experiment. It was as though everyone in the barrio knew his father was a cruel man and--worse--that detail seemed to attract similar attention from other bullies. It was as though they could smell the scent of one of their own basting over an ample piece of prey. 

It went on for years. A church that shamed his mother for leaving his father was no help, and so Barba had relied fully on his friends. It was impossible to quantify the number of beatings they must have spared him, or the small fortune of lunch money that somehow stayed in his pocket. 

“Must have been good practice, though,” Carisi said. “Now you stand up for people professionally.”

It was so candied sweet a sentiment that Barba let out an audible _“Ugh”_ to match the pinched expression on his face. 

“I'm serious! You work hard. You help us make these… impossible cases.”

“I’m not above crawling through a loophole or two,” Barba allowed. Not above accepting high praise when it came his way, either.

“You know I was at Queens SVU before this? Brooklyn SVU before that? And Staten Island SVU _before that?”_ Carisi didn’t even bother to name his illustrious career in Homicide. 

Barba knew Carisi had been hard to take when he first started, but he didn’t know as much was named. Barba felt a twinge of sympathy and embarrassment on Carisi’s behalf; he wasn’t the man he’d been, brash and prone to overcompensating. A slew of other boroughs lost their chance at a worthwhile detective. 

Barba did not say _that,_ of course. He raised an eyebrow, made light: “Is that a career path or an atlas?”

“What I want to say is, thank you. Before coming to Manhattan, I didn’t see many of those victims walk away feeling vindicated.”

Barba liked to think he knew a line when he heard one. For as endearing and--Barba believed, always--genuine as Carisi was, this was a textbook build-up in preparation for a colossal letdown, the kind of rollercoaster ride that even Coney Island would find fault with. Barba drew in a steadying breath in anticipation for the plunge.

“So you’re impressed by me. I _impress_ you.” 

That what they had could have been the result of a simple crush should not surprise Barba, though it was much as he had feared: a splendid thing that ultimately could not sustain itself.

The romance--and it certainly had been that, at points--played out in a dizzying array of cliches, and should have announced itself to Barba, who had his fair share of charmed dalliances with instructors, colleagues, and mentors. Wanting so much to be _like_ them conflated quickly into _liking_ them. A hasty affair or simply getting to know the person always set him straight, to bastardize a phrase. 

Barba could imagine Carisi on that same journey, and supposed he did not have the right to feel disappointed. He'd broken some hearts in his heyday.

“Yeah, you do,” Carisi said, a touch shyly. “I am. Among other things.” 

Barba closed his eyes against a bitter chill. He imagined it did more to keep the warmth inside him than his own coat. There may be hope, yet. 

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he started, then waved through the whole ‘putting one's life in the line of fire every day as an officer of the law’ _thing._ “But almost dying? Kind of liberating.” Barba hoped Carisi caught his drift. 

“Hey, that’s a luxury every civilian deserves,” Carisi said, and Barba resolved to be more forward. Subtlety was a dead art, anyway. 

“When I told you we should end things… I was too hasty. Cowardly.” Barba waited a beat, leaving the sentence standing alone so that it could be understood. “I explained the situation to Liv. Told her about… us.”

“I kind of figured,” Carisi said smartly. He wasn’t one for surprises. “Before, when I wasn’t ever tasked to watch out for you, it kind of went without saying.” Meaning, he didn’t say, _On account of how I said ‘fuck you’ in front of everybody._

“I picked up the slack in the office, but still felt bad about it. When I asked the Lieutenant to put me on _Barba Duty_ so I could do my fair share, she kind of looked at me like…” Carisi shook his head, smiled as the memory warmed through his chest. “She was impressed. It’s not a look I get often, so I kind of made a note of it.” Carisi’s smile softened into something gentle--not his usual fare for gloating. “Thanks for doing that.”

Barba walked for a time and did not say anything in return. He ran the possibilities over in his head, again and again, searching each for an outcome he might have missed. 

It still needed saying. 

He wanted to resume what they’d been doing, now that his security detail was gone, and the threat to his life was successfully mitigated. However blatantly selfish the sentiment, that was where Barba stood. Those quiet nights filled with feverish contact were not so long gone that he couldn’t still imagine their return.

And he wasn’t ready to grieve for them. 

Benson would know, which was all Carisi had wanted a month ago. Barba couldn’t help but think that generous deal was since shelved, and Carisi would level greater terms. He would either have to pony up his privacy or trust that Carisi would be overly kind to him again, and trade his own pride for Barba’s tactful secrecy. 

But Barba could not see that happening, and so he held his tongue. Who came to the table to get swindled?

While Barba thought his silence would protect his thoughts, he did not count on Carisi knowing him too well--a strange oversight, given the plunging depths of their intimacy. Carisi put words to the expressions on Barba’s face, and of all that had gone unsaid, he felt inclined to speak to it.

“I miss you, too,” Carisi said. He raised his head and gave a look like an act of devotion, practiced fealty. Barba felt richer for it. 

“I miss _it._ With you,” he continued. They walked much closer now--had to, given the topic of conversation. Speaking to intimacy seemed to echo its treatment. “‘Cause you’re nice, when I’m on top of you. In you.” Carisi blushed, there. It had only been the once, and it had only been fingers, but it was nonetheless one of the more surreal and manic experiences Carisi had ever known. Like his time in a courtroom, it too was at Barba's verbose instruction. 

If fear of providing an honest word on his newfound sexual preferences did not stop him, nothing would.

Carisi's expression changed, collapsed in on itself like a building. Pieces rattled and shook until it was all he could do to search rapidly through the wreckage. This was the remains of his self-imposed heterosexuality, here. There were bodies. 

“It's just--shit,” he faltered, losing the words to the rubble. “Shit.”

“These don’t sound like compliments anymore.”

“Just--what if being gay means they’re all like you?” Carisi winced on Barba's behalf, then hastened to clarify: “Relationships, I mean. What if you think they’re great and they just don’t matter? And you just feel...stupid. For ever thinking…” he trained off, still uncertain. 

Carisi was hurt, Barba realized. And more prideful than he even let on. He could not articulate it, but his hangup was clear: he did not want to be treated that way again, but with Barba he saw it happening. It was the very conceit in being with him: a ready dismissal was inevitable. Carisi could be discarded again, just as callously, if the action serviced an end. Nothing stood before Barba as tall as the goals he set for himself, and the standards he kept to meet them. He'd excuse everything else from his line of sight. 

Carisi knew this much, hence the distance he put between them, the girlfriend, the objections. Everything done in the face of Barba's attempts to return to his good graces. The invitations, the comments-- _Kiss it better. Come over._ \--had been a torture without equal. Carisi had come to accept that every good thing would conclude with a helping of pain previously unmatched. Barba would always outdo himself. 

In the same breath, Carisi wasn't lying when he said he'd understood Barba’s concerns, even shared them. Barba worried that was an entirely new development, and his alone in the making. Had he taught Carisi self-deception? Was that his legacy?

How did that even _rank?_ Just above an STD, if he was being generous?

Barba wanted, at the very least, to be remembered for something genuine. Top five blowjobs, maybe, though he wanted to claim multiple ranks. 

He studied Carisi, realized he was wearing what appeared to be a new shirt and tie under his coat, like he’d seen some value in dressing nicely for the last day of Barba’s trial. Alternatively too-white and pink-faced from the cold, he looked new all over. Barba felt like he could really ruin something here. 

“That's not how it should feel,” Barba finally said, not excusing himself. “Ever.”

“It didn't,” Carisi said, again being too generous, and tying himself in knots to spare Barba's feelings. “You know, up until it really, really did.”

There was a tightness to his voice that Barba recognized. He heard it in the courtroom all the time. People came in, their convictions drawn over their shoulders like a heavy blanket. Eventually Barba had the thing in his arms, and they were left bare, shivering, forced to live without it. This was the first time Carisi had spoken of Barba in respect to how they’d ended things. The first, too, that he saw it for a solitary, selfish act. 

“I’m sorry.” 

They arrived at the courtyard on which Barba's building sat. There was polished stonework and seating, and Barba thought about how he'd never really cared to witness the scene in warmer months. From the snow-dusted bench on which they sat, Barba only needed to look up and to his left to spy his sheltered office windows.

Barba led the effort not to enter the building just yet. He experienced something like obligation staying his movements. If he kept up their pace, he'd feel as though he was getting out ahead of Carisi's grievances. Barba thought he ought to stand accountable.

But Carisi didn't have the laundry list of issues with Barba. There was just the one.

It wasn’t snowing and the wind had died down. There was only a stillness the cold seemed to flourish in. Barba felt it in the creases around his eyes and in his hands, which he’d laid out on his knees in penance. Behind them, a four-foot circular stone planter held offerings of winter jasmine and cigarette butts. Above them, the narrow branches of a tree were encased in crystalline ice so fine it seemed to sing. 

Barba felt lonely in it all, and knew he was potentially damning himself to more. 

“I value my privacy,” he said, and smiled despite himself. “I know this isn’t an opportune time to say as much, but I do. And more than that, I’m realistic about my aspirations. I want to succeed more than I want to be happy or make others happy. That’s just how I’m wired.” He slipped his hands back into his pockets like he’d been told to keep them to himself. 

“And it’s fine, so long as I don’t overstep myself, or fail to… inform.” It sounded like a disease, his drive. A more poetic mind than his would deem it so: his body was merely a host, and while the virus did not infect others, it attacked whatever formed between them. It killed relationships. 

Barba concluded with patient zero: “Yelina saw it in me, and left, and I’d loved her more than I’d ever thought possible.”

“Yeah, but look who she married.”

“A brilliant man,” Barba defended. There was a snap to his voice that clued Carisi into another truth: maybe Yelina wasn’t Barba’s only lost love. Maybe they were a pair. 

“A good man,” Barba continued. “With his faults, yes, but--”

“Without his convictions, Rafi, I’m sorry, but he ain’t shit.” Carisi had followed the story in the papers, and since transferring to Manhattan had learned more. Over drinks, Carisi got Amaro to speak to the whole sordid tale--mayoral candidate Alex Muñoz’s catastrophic fall from grace; the whole barrio on his side and Barba stood against it all; Barba’s borderline illegal intervention; his apparent heartbreak that his friend could not only be so stupid, but so cruel as to cheat on his wife. Amaro rendered that particular point like a skyscraper: every denial Barba had for Muñoz’s behavior was answerable with his wife, Yelina. _He_ wouldn’t because he had _her._

Amaro was not kind to any of the players in his telling, but Carisi made his own conclusions. 

“Convictions,” Barba repeated. “Maybe I don’t have too many of those, myself.” Then, because there was no tearing the likes of Alex Muñoz from his heart, Barba acknowledged just one more thing in the fallen man’s favor, a sideways: “I forget you weren’t there.” 

Carisi sighed but said nothing back, not even a punchy, _Yeah, well. I read the papers._

Then, sparked with incredulous fervor, Barba asked: “Did you just call me _Rafi?”_

Carisi’s face split open with a smile. It broke apart the building unease between them and filled the moment with light. 

“Your mom. That's what she calls you, said everybody calls you. Because _Barba_ is her last name, and you weren't able to take it until--”

“College,” Barba finished, feeling inexplicably warm despite the icy wind blasting in from the east. It was some time even before his father had died, but Barba completed the paperwork himself, waiting until he was old enough so as not to put his mother in the position of being asked to sign it. He’d been worried, somehow, that she would think it tasteless. He remembered, instead, how she’d wrapped him in her arms and cried--a first. 

“God,” Barba muttered, wistful but trying not to sound it. “How long did you talk to her?”

He couldn’t think what they’d whispered through to arrive there. Even something so simple as a name, for him, came loaded with all manner of history and secrets. 

“She was real proud that you took the stand. I said there was never any question that you would, but. She was proud.” 

“She tell you that?” 

“She didn't tell you?” Carisi asked, then abruptly stood. He dusted off the back of his pants and laughed at himself. “Sorry. I can’t sit, I’m gonna freeze my nuts off.”

His coat, Barba was slow to notice, didn’t carry on past his waist. Barba could hardly imagine sitting as long as he had. His own skirted past his knees. 

“I’ll wait it out, then. Solve one of our problems.”

It earned him a soft snort of approval. 

Carisi kicked the toe of his shoe against the ground, stirring up a breath of snow. “That girl I was seeing? Things. Uh. Didn’t work out.”

“I’m shocked,” Barba said. Then, upon realizing how dismissive he sounded, amended: “I mean it--”

“You’re an asshole.”

“I am that. But I’m also… surprised. Because I know you, and I know if it was something you wanted you would--” Barba stopped, considered what it was he’d expected to happen. As far as Barba experience allowed for broader pontification, when Carisi wanted something, he changed for it. In little ways, but a lot of little ways. For his work and his education, that methodology served him well. For relationships, it regulated his presence, made a part of him absent. His personality withdrew into purgatory until he wagered he was loved enough that maybe he could risk showing the whole of himself. 

_Ah,_ Barba thought ruefully. _Answered my own question, there._

The incessant buzzing of his phone gave Barba cause not to finish his thought aloud. He stared numbly at the text he’d received. 

“There’s apparently a mob outside my office.”

“Well-wishers?” Carisi asked for the sake of it. They both knew better. 

“Wouldn’t that be something,” Barba muttered as his fingers typed out a swift response to Carmen, telling her to leave if they wouldn’t. Then he stood and started for the building. 

Carisi’s grip around his wrist halted him in his tracks. “Hey, just. Wait a second, okay?”

Barba wrenched his arm back, steeled himself, and said, “Wait for what? What am I waiting for? It’s not going to stop.”

It was a thing he’d come to accept, perhaps, if only because he’d visited the idea often enough. Constant hyper vigilance and situational awareness were skills he’d learned over the past year, yet the notion of living _the rest of his life_ with those guiding principles made him feel as though _he’d_ been issued the prison sentence.

“Hey,” Carisi said, firmer this time. “Anybody would be crazy to try that shit again.” 

“But competent enough to try it to begin with. Great pep talk, very helpful.” 

Barba had already turned his back on Carisi, was speaking to the empty air ahead of him, his words jumping off into the world in great warm tufts. Chest out, chin up, Barba stepped through his own ghostly breath. 

And, like clockwork, Carisi was at his side again. 

“I’ll walk you up.”

Their footsteps left the forgiving silence of the snow outside and fell to into an echoing cacophony inside the building, racketing around the tiled floors and humming against marble walls. 

When they curled around a corner and arrived at the entrance to Barba’s office and what amounted to a waiting room, though it was laden with filing cabinets and a workspace for Carmen.

Carmen, they quickly realized, who hadn’t left. Carmen, who had ample company.

There were no more than ten officers, but within the space, their ranks felt greater--an army of middle-aged white men, intimidating for the anonymity earned by their uniform and face. They all stood with their arms folded in front, elbows jutting out at the sides. Perhaps it was a gesture designed to show the weapons at their hips, but not their inherent attachment to them. Barba was only meant to infer their intentions.

To her credit, Carmen was straight-backed and working, determinedly ignoring the bizarre gathering. Barba did not hesitate in the doorway or attempt to slink in unseen; he made his move assuredly, arriving at Carmen’s side and dipping his head low, meeting hers. It was almost like privacy, though there were eyes trained on Barba’s movements and angry voices to accompany them. 

Barba paid the mob no mind. In no uncertain terms, he told Carmen that their collective pride meant nothing, and she should take the rest of the day, start her weekend early. It was only after he gathered her coat and purse for her that she stood to meet him. In accepting her belongings, she squeezed his hand.

He wondered if they both shared visions of him being gunned down in his own office, coloring the walls and staining the carpet. At this point, the motive would hold no mystery, and no audience was necessary. At least, Barba did not hope for one. 

And should nothing come to pass than a few idle threats, it was better, too, if she wasn’t there.

Barba did not spare a second glance at the officers, deciding that he had to first secure Carmen’s safety. He did this as was fit: she needed assurance, and he had arrived in step with a detective. Barba handed her off to Carisi, instructing him to walk her out and put her in a cab. 

Barba somehow had the misguided impression he could handle this alone. 

Carisi did not waste time arguing. Putting deathly visions in Barba’s head wasn’t a task that needed any additional aid. Still, leaving him to field verbal abuse--or worse--from the crowd was no easy act in its own right, and Carisi felt the struggle rip into his heart, if not stay his departure.

“I’ll be right back,” Carisi said to the room at large. He shot Barba a warning look before he left, which Barba very nearly rolled his eyes at, as if to say, _You’re worried about what **I’m** going to do?_

Barba turned to face the crowd. He deftly unbuttoned his coat and let it slide off his shoulders, cool as the bits of snow that still clung to its fibers. 

He surveyed the group, and for a moment neither party said a word. They’d silenced their own murmuring and stared Barba down as if they meant to consume him, and each man was staking his claim on one limb or another. 

Given the conversation he’d just left hanging in the courtyard, Barba thought it was nice to be wanted.

“I don’t suppose you’ve come to me with a legal matter,” Barba said, his tone one of practiced magnanimity. “Union issues aren’t my specialty, but you’re entitled to your benefits. Just say the word and I’ll give my colleague a call. He’s a shark.”

Barba was met with only more silence. 

It wasn’t empty, the kind that exists in want of the right word or phrase, absent of anything less. It was too sharp to be natural, too prolonged to be accidental. There was sentiment--great, stifling heaps of it--but it went unspoken. 

The silence was purposeful in its creation, chosen and orchestrated. Same as one might pick up a megaphone to be heard at a rally, here the absence of words was harnessed like a tool. 

_What aren’t we saying?_

Barba realized this _was_ the much-feared reprisal for the charges brought up against his assailants. Or at least, the first taste he was to get of it. 

A show of force. Innocuous enough not to raise serious alarm, but riddled with intent. Their uniformed bodies carried most of the weight in that regard, but there was something about their closed-mouthed breathing that did Barba in. It was not silence as he knew it--as powerlessness, lack of resources, and systematic. These men played as if they did not have a voice, when here they stood, practically shouting their position: _We can be here. You can’t stop us._

It felt for all the world like a schoolyard shakedown. Barba had known enough of those before. Bigger boys didn’t even have to shout him down. When they wanted something, their height, broad shoulders, and strong arms said _give it to me._

“Ah,” Barba said, and smiled, though the scene sickened him. _So it’s this tired old routine._

He could not talk only to make noise; it would give away his nerves, and the officers wanted to do that much. They were of a mind to expose Barba’s fraying ends, remind him that nothing was promised and _nothing_ was over. 

But nor could Barba be silenced, kicked into submission like a dog. That much had been in his nature, once, but he knew better now. Subjugation was a tool, not a trait. 

He presented, then, a poisoned chalice: his words, free and easy, but spoken in his own language. 

Barba spoke his piece in Spanish, his voice raised and assured, kissed up to the heavens with its sweetness. He inquired plainly after the officers’ intentions, asked if they were at all concerned with the corruption in their ranks, or if they celebrated it? Were they sorry their brothers in blue were caught and convicted, or merely caught?

He stopped mid-rant, took in their angered expressions, and felt his own lip curl in equal disdain. “¿No?” he asked tauntingly, “Usted no está oyendo?”

Carisi returned to the office in time to catch the end of Barba’s little show. He could scarcely make sense of it, so he shouted down Barba by addressing the officers. 

“Okay, thanks for coming, time to go. All of you. _Out._ ” 

One of the younger officers lost his cool, broke the heavy band of silence and demanded to know why they should be forced to leave.

“Doesn’t matter,” Carisi shot back. Gone was his guileless face. “Fire Code violation. Or maybe I just don’t like you.”

Another officer--this one older, bigger--stepped up, crowded Carisi. “You his bodyguard?”

“I’m his friend,” Carisi corrected, and drew back his jacket so as to rest his hand on his hip, exposing his badge. “He’s got plenty.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s your badge number, shitstain?”

“0-1-8-8,” Carisi rattled off without hesitation. “And I don’t need to ask for yours, pal. I’m gonna remember your face.”

The officers returned to silence and slowly took their leave. Theirs was a slow procession made like a parade route, taking the main thoroughfare down past their most rapt audience member: Barba. 

He wanted to take a page from Carisi’s book and study their faces, but Barba couldn’t get that far. He found himself stuck in some middle distance, seeing nothing for all his white-hot anger.

“Sowing distrust among the ranks,” Barba observed once they’d gone. “Is that wise?”

“Compared to whatever the fuck you were doing? A language lesson, really?”

“Trying to have a conversation,” Barba corrected. His neck and face felt hot. “You know, because I’m curious. People having some single-minded plan to kill you makes you wonder if there’s something to it.”

Carisi shook his head and drew a hand over his hair, which had fallen slightly out of place. Barba guessed he’d walked Carmen to a taxi, and then _ran_ back. 

“Stay here. I’m gonna to do a quick sweep of your office.”

“Going to sniff out trouble?” Barba said, and strolled right in ahead of Carisi. The officers were there to antagonize him. If they’d meant to do grievous harm, they’d have gone about it like their predecessors, and lost themselves into a sea of their own. They wouldn’t show up like two basketball teams ready to take court. 

For what it was worth, Carisi did circle the room. Between his long strides and coming up empty in his handsy searching of bookshelves and under tables, he said, “I’m telling you, they just wanted to hear their dicks flap in the wind. You know, like--”

Barba raised an eyebrow. “Star-spangled cock and balls? I get it. Patriotism at its finest.” 

He moved to lean against his desk and began exchanging texts with Carmen, ensuring she was fine and no one had said or done anything untoward. 

_[Just that cop lives matter but how could ~I~ understand that? Real winners there, boss.]_

Barba smiled at her answer. 

_[How was the party, by the way?]_

_[Premature]_ Barba wrote back. 

“Carmen doing okay?” Carisi asked, but didn’t wait for a reply. He was rifling through couch cushions. “She told me they’d all just shown up, real quick. She e-mailed security and texted you--in that order--and we beat security to the punch.”

“As is rapidly becoming the trend,” Barba said airily. He thought about how blissful it would be to put the matter out of his head, to ignore it entirely. Could it work? He’d never really tried.

As he typed a memo to himself to take time Monday and _again_ revisit options should Carmen want to transfer out of his office--a regular discussion, though never once jumped on by his most competent legal assistant--Barba supposed he simply wasn’t meant to live in ignorance. 

He took off his jacket, folded it neatly over a chair, and stood at the window. He caught a glimpse of the officers who had previously invaded the waiting area outside his office, the strong-shouldered lot of them, the blue of their uniforms touched blue-black by the fading winter afternoon. Barba did not linger and allow himself a finer headcount. 

There’d be security footage for that.

He shook off the unease, but rallied his indignation. Trespassers may have found and sullied his home, but his office was a kingdom. They had not--would not--enter it. He'd lose the battle and win the war, and forever preserve what was rightfully his: a title and station he’d long worked for, and so dedicated himself that there was no other side to return to, were he to lose either. 

_This_ was life or death.

He sat at his desk and flipped open his laptop with one hand, commanded a stack of depositions with the other. It was a physical stretch, and to accomplish it Barba had to take in more of the room. He wanted to kick up his feet, next, and truly own what was his. 

“Are you seriously working?” Carisi asked from across the room.

Barba willed himself not to look at the man. If he did, he’d want him. And maybe he was feeling rattled, angry, and inexplicably brave enough to say so. 

“Did I _not_ just tell you where I was going and for what explicit purpose? And you walked me here? Any of this ringing a bell?”

His voice got high, led with annoyance. He supposed he sounded more like himself now than he had in months. 

“Yeah, but. It’s Friday.”

Barba remembered when last Carisi said that to him. Like magic words, and then they shared a night together. _It’s Friday,_ except that it was already Saturday, and they spent the day fucking like they had to make up for lost time. 

But that was an overly simplistic rendering of that day, and as it happened, Barba was ready with another: “And I’ve already celebrated, and it was lovely, and now it’s done.”

“Okay, well. Pardon my saying so, but that doesn’t seem normal.” If Carisi was good for anything, it was a half-formed opinion. “Are you seeing the therapist Benson suggested?”

“No.”

“Man--”

“I found my own.” Barba glanced at his computer screen and realized he hadn’t yet turned the damn thing on. He jabbed at the button with all the force he put into his steely aside: “A colleague’s therapist? That’s practically incest.” 

Carisi stood against one of the chairs positioned before Barba’s desk. He wrapped both hands around the top rail and leaned forward. “Yeah, maybe you should get back to work. Start with reviewing a dictionary.”

“Very funny,” Barba hummed. “We talked about you, some.”

“Good things?”

Barba served him a flat look. “It’s therapy.” 

“Sensual things?”

Barba allowed himself to smile openly at that. “M-hm. And what an hour that was.” He deftly unbuttoned his shirt just under the knot of his tie, loosened both, then pretended to fan at his open throat with the flat of his hand. 

A grin spread easily across Carisi’s face. “A whole hour? Hey, I’m honored.”

“Well, fifty minutes.” 

The grin didn’t waver. If anything, it stretched further, crinkled Carisi’s blue eyes until they shone like shattered glass. All that joy could hurt someone. “Still pretty good.”

And then--suddenly--it was too much. Barba was certain that, in the past hour, he’d experienced so great a range of emotions, it could rank second to nothing less than puberty. 

He’d held his breath and witnessed his own vindication, then laughed and been unruly with friends. He’d torn his heart open for judgment, built himself a soapbox, stared down evil, and felt useless for all of it.

Barba couldn’t help what came next: he brought his palms to his eyes, dug his fingers into his scalp and hair, and breathed deep. The release of that air was a slow, shuddering effort. This unfettered display of exhaustion wasn’t something Barba would have ever chosen to do in the company of others, not even a lover. Here, it was a compulsion. His body demanded the herculean effort: shift the unmanageable weight in his heart into a physical one. Make it possible. Survive it. 

This was grief delayed. 

“Fuck,” he muttered to himself. “Fuck me running.” 

He’d been vindictive, but he hadn’t been smart. He who wields the knife will never wear the crown.

When retreated his hands, a slow drag down the length of his face, Carisi had gone quiet, a silent partner in the awful production. He’d moved from behind the chair into it, and even then sat on the very edge of the seat. He was staring at Barba as if he’d seen something entirely new in the display: just a flash, really, of the deep and abiding sadness that weighed on the man’s soul, and the crassness he fell into when he went there, felt sad. It seemed to speak for itself: _No, stupid. Not that._

Carisi laid his hand flat across the desk, palm open. When Barba dropped his own from his face, it fell into Carisi’s. He nearly jumped at the contact, but melted into it instead. The touch was cool and reassuring. Barba felt as though he was tethered to the earth.

“My life’s going to change,” he said, though he sounded more curious at the thought than resigned to it. His life would change _more than it already had,_ given that he was apparently in the habit of having his hand held, now. He’d been liberated, but there was a catch. He was a known commodity. He was an outlaw made famous by name for deeds that were more legend than fact.

“I’m going to be the go-to man for cop cases,” he realized. “To lose them, even, to tip the scales.”

“I gotta call bullshit there,” Carisi said. His confidence did nothing to lift Barba’s own. “As if anyone’s going to tell you what to do.” 

“Uh, the D.A., for one.” 

“They're not throwing you to the dogs, here. Everybody showed up for you. And we’ll still give you cases.”

“That's not the encouraging sentiment you think it is.”

“I gotta believe it’s going to be okay,” Carisi said, his voice so quiet that Barba wondered if he hadn’t whispered the sentiment to himself. But Carisi’s gaze was level when Barba raised his own to meet it, and the words were meant for him. “Because it can’t get worse.”

“That’s some astute reasoning.” 

Carisi squeezed his hand--not helpless, but assured. “It's all I got.”

Whether it was faith or goodness or simple stupidity, Barba didn’t know. Carisi looked so goddamn sincere that Barba wanted to believe it. He was losing his touch. 

“Maybe it's enough,” he allowed, and felt every bit as faithful, good, and stupid for saying so.

Barba thought about asking if Carisi wanted to continue their earlier conversation. He decided--no. He’d said all that he could. If Carisi knew better than to make the same mistake twice, good for him. 

Barba cleared his throat, pulled his hand away, and began to needlessly tidy his desk. There _was_ work to be done, and he willed himself into such a state as to do it.

“Do you want to help?” Barba asked, and felt comfortable doing so. There was never a time when Carisi turned down an opportunity to show off his recently acquired skillset. “Get dinner after?”

“Sure.” Carisi’s answer was given with an ease Barba had feared he wouldn’t hear again. It was too reminiscent of their time together: talking, working, making haphazard and eventual plans. They could have been in bed together, Barba explaining why breakfast was overrated, but coffee was a necessity.

“I moved. Did I tell you?”

“No,” Carisi said, and tried to act surprised. It was a reasonable move, and with the means to do so, Carisi had long believed Barba would make the change. His apartment wasn't safe, and while maybe in time it would feel that way again, Barba's priorities laid elsewhere. His apartment was a necessary casualty. “Where to?”

Barba sighed outright, piquing Carisi’s interest. “Tragically enough, the Bronx.”

“No way,” Carisi said, grinning wide. 

“This is a grievous misfortune,” Barba reminded him, taking a stern tone. “Don’t look so pleased.” 

As if explicitly told to do so, Carisi smothered his smile. Barba sighed, shook his head. The reality of the change still had not quite reached him--same as the water pressure in the shower and his forwarded mail. 

“My abuela’s old apartment,” he said, and that was explanation enough. He was trading one haunting for another, and when he sat alone in the place, still littered with his abuela’s furniture and belongings, surrounded by the hideous mint-green paintjob she’d been so taken with since the 90’s, he wondered if he wasn’t just punishing himself. Staring at his own ceiling and being consumed with horrific imaginings of his own death would be welcome, now, to staring at his grandmother’s favorite chair, and remembering how he’d talked up the fine furnishings of the retirement home without even so much as offering to just have the thing delivered to her. 

“Just until I can find something more permanent in Manhattan,” he continued, because he had to believe _that much,_ too. He’d left his old neighborhood for a new life, but there were reasons still why he’d never gone back: he didn’t belong there anymore. And while he’d since grown out of his need for protection on those streets, and parted ways with his dearest friends, the ground didn’t feel hard enough under his feet. He wanted Manhattan and all the challenges that came with it. He wanted to conquer. 

He smiled false, not showing his teeth. There were sides of him still too ambitious and conniving to be seen by others. He knew better than to ever let them slip.

“The commute alone…”

Carisi quirked a smile of his own, something wholly genuine. Barba liked to think he wasn’t capable of anything less. “You mean the train, right? Not the three flights of stairs.”

“Har-dee-har,” Barba sniffed. “It’s six, by the way. And consider your housewarming invitation revoked.”

“Did you invite anyone else?” Carisi asked, and Barba was so taken with his boldness, he nearly didn’t reply.

 _What gave me away?_ first came to mind, but held his tongue. He had an opportunity, now, to be genuine. And though that was hardly so rare a thing, that he saw it first before stepping over it was novel, maybe even a first.

In Carisi, Barba had an opportunity to repossess himself, maybe, through someone that saw a little good in him. Good, and strength and mettle and prestige, and all else that Barba sometimes felt he lacked.

“I didn’t,” he said, surprising himself with how quiet his voice was to his own ears. “I won’t.” 

Head down, he looked up. It was not his most flattering angle, but Barba couldn’t bring himself to throw his chin out, relax his shoulders, and pretend he wasn’t scared shitless of being rejected. He caught Carisi’s gaze, held it. He thought the severe lines high on his cheeks eyes looked like a mother’s arm cradling the youth that was his eyes. They were so inescapably bright. Incandescent, even. 

Endlessly hopeful.

Barba couldn’t stop for falling over himself. He wanted this too damn bad. Wanted some glimmer of good amidst the dark, dank pit he’d sunk into during the past year. Longer, even. When had he last held someone just to feel close to them? When had he last opened himself up to heartache?

“Come home with me? Please.” Finally, he’d said it as it was meant to be phrased: a question, though he ought to sooner beg. A sly comment meant nothing, said nothing. A question said it all. A question was an admission of guilt, a word of intent, and a prayer all in one. 

“Not that I deserve it. But if you’re stilling taking stock of what I want,” Barba stopped, wondered when he’d grown so soft with himself as to so readily chance his pride, “It’d be this.”

How he’d managed to speak in such finite terms was beyond him. He loved words, luxuriated in their wide and varied use. They were self-inhabiting, owned more real estate in Barba than Barba himself had a claim on. 

He couldn’t show that to Carisi, who wouldn’t want to see it. _Look what I got_ \--no. _Look who I am._

Carisi’s gaze retreated. He looked down, away, and successfully hid his smile.

“Oh come on,” Barba said, his tone desperate. “Say something. Or _do_ something. Storm out, maybe? It’d be preferable to--nothing.” 

“I want to,” Carisi said, and at Barba’s puff-cheeked breath-holding, waved a hand in a rolling motion, like he was physically willing himself to catch up in the conversation. “I want to go home with you.” 

“Oh,” Barba said, and leaned back in his chair. “Okay, then. Excellent.”

“I want--”

Barba cut him off, answering promptly, “Anything.”

“That seems excessive.”

It was a wobbly joke, not because it wasn’t well timed or smartly stated, but because it lacked any truth. Finally, Barba managed the barest of coy smiles. 

“Does it?”

They didn’t race to meet, embrace and kiss in confirmation of a deal struck. 

Barba swiveled in his chair, pleased, and Carisi watched. Then he stood, slow and labored, like the effort was almost too much and he might still forgo it altogether. 

Then Barba stood and waited. He slipped his hands into his pockets and leaned with practiced ease against the glass pane bookshelf lining the whole of the far wall. 

Their movements were languid to match, with each man choosing to believe there was no inherent rush to action. They had time, still, to savor the loss of distance before they gained so much in its place. They could be content to merely stand and bear witness to their deeds, good and bad, that nonetheless found hope in their futures. 

The moment Carisi saddled up to Barba--dropped an elbow to lean against the same set of shelves, looking just as pleased as Barba, if not more so. He hadn’t had to do the asking, this time. 

_God,_ Carisi thought to himself. _In what world?_

The notion prompted a breathless shred of laughter, and the presence of mind to duck his head, bite his lip. He was right where Barba could have him and--well.

Barba lost his resolve. He frowned, nose wrinkling and the corners of his mouth careening downwards like birds falling out of the air. He looked comical in his sudden dejection.

“For the record, I wasn’t going to,” he started, and then drew Carisi in for a kiss. 

And Carisi would swear to God and to himself, he could taste the smarm on Barba’s lips. It was slick like juice from a fat nectarine, carmelized by a tongue that treated words like a dish made to sustain its eater in every respect--the soul, the heart, _everything is fed._ The kiss traded in weight, a kind they passed back and forth to lessen each of their burdens. 

But perhaps best of all, it was life-affirming. There was only one way in which this kiss was shared, and here they stood, occupying that sole reality. 

Barba dug in deeper, willing Carisi to understand just how much he wanted this, and how that didn’t frighten him anymore.

They split apart only so that Barba could hear his due response. 

“Can we do that?” Carisi asked, pink-lipped.

“Plenty of that.”

“Here?”

Barba knew what Carisi was not asking, and truthfully, the words alluded him, too. He underwent a silence--a familiar shadow. He sidestepped the matter, same as Carisi, but compromised where he could: “The couch would be kinder on my back.”

He raised his eyebrows, which opened his eyes, which made him look sweet. 

They didn’t get there, didn’t move from the spot. The couch may as well have been the courthouse steps for how very much they were not going to rut atop it. Carisi felt rooted there, and it was--without a doubt--where Barba belonged. 

Carisi’s fingers grazed the side of Barba’s head, where the wound was mostly healed, the bruise all but gone. He stared like he could still see it: the broken skin, red and raised, wet-looking even days later, as if it still hurt. 

“Was it better? In court?”

The question clicked and Barba remembered standing with Carisi in the hallway of his apartment building, awaiting the perp-walk. Barba had since forgotten about it, and during his trial had not spared too many looks at the backs of Donaldson’s and Miller’s heads. 

“I wasn’t thinking about them.” 

“Look who's got lines, now,” Carisi grinned. “That was a good one, though.”

“Thought it up special.”

Barba met Carisi with a look of plumb satisfaction. There was more between them than he was willing to lose a second time, and the realization was not prompted by neither the kiss nor the prospect of actions more involved. He knew this even as they stood side-by-side, nothing but a foot tipped-turned towards the other. 

They were separates. And in service to that was the unruly logic between them, the sense that men of similar minds could embody vastly differing performances. It was a fine distinction, because it meant that everything else was a choice. Bathed in blood and doubt and twisted through time, this was his choice. Theirs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all I got!
> 
> Thank you, kind readers, for all the encouragement and kind words. I hope this story was enjoyable!


End file.
